In conversation with Lilith about her role in the University’s Amnesty branch and their upcoming campaigns.
Amnesty International is a global organisation involving more than 10 million people in branches worldwide. Committees in 150 countries work to bring attention to human rights issues through campaigns and fundraising events. The University of Glasgow branch has been dedicated to educating the student population about global issues for years. I spoke with Lilith Murie Wilde, an Ordinary Board Member for 25-26, to find out about what the committee has planned for this year. Having worked with Amnesty campaigns for most of her life, Lilith was eager to take part in the Glasgow branch during her time at the University. The position of Ordinary Board Member gives her the flexibility to focus on the topics she is most passionate about.
Lilith tells me, “I’ve actually always worked with Amnesty. There’s this campaign that Amnesty has had for decades called Write for Rights, with the aim of releasing political prisoners. You can write cards to political prisoners, like messages of solidarity, but you can also write messages to political leaders: government officials, presidents, and prime ministers of the country that is holding a lot of those people. Essentially, the point of it is to force their postal service to the point that either they can see that there is an international community that is against them right now, or it stops their postal service to such an extent that it sways them to release people or to at least listen to Amnesty. My mum got me involved in making Christmas cards for prisoners when I was a kid. Then I started chapters in all of my schools growing up, and I fundraised for Amnesty when I turned 18, and then I took a bit of time off to do my degree, and so I wanted to get involved again, as my goal is to be an international human rights lawyer.”
The Glasgow branch hosted its own Write for Rights event on the 18th of November in collaboration with the Women in Politics society. The campaign is a yearly tradition for Amnesty which, as Lilith mentions, is an opportunity to write to governments and political prisoners to offer solidarity for those who have been wrongly persecuted.
With regard to GU Amnesty’s goals for this academic year, Lilith informs me that they want to “[increase] visibility and presence on campus, because a lot of students have no idea what Amnesty is, or they don’t know that we have a branch at the University.”
Intersectionality is another key goal for this year. They are looking to “focus on a more diverse range of topics.” The Free Palestine movement has received a lot of attention, Lilith says. Whilst Amnesty supports the movement, with “at least 50” other societies and committees on campus currently focusing on Free Palestine, Amnesty has taken this as an opportunity to focus on other issues of importance. “The goal is to shine light on issues that people might not know about while also increasing our presence on campus.”
I ask Lilith what her favourite upcoming Amnesty campaign is, and she tells me about a campaign that she is working on bringing to campus called Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. From 2009 to 2021, 490 indigenous women and girls were killed in Canada. Studies have found that these occurrences often go unnoticed, despite these events of homicides and violent crime making up a disproportionate amount of criminal cases in the country. This issue is of personal significance to Lilith, as she is Canadian herself.
They aim to include this campaign in the SRC’s 16 days of activism, from the 25th of November until the 10th of December, which focuses on gender-based violence. “We are trying to implement this event to raise awareness, and raise money for some Canadian organisations that support the cause. We have a potential, unconfirmed speaker from Canada that’s going to be doing an online talk explaining more about what [the campaign] is, and so that’s kind of my passion project.”
Lilith speaks with a certain spark in her eye; it is clear that these issues mean a lot to her, and to the rest of the committee she works with. As a University organisation, Amnesty are doing the best they can to make humanitarian issues a more prominent subject in students’ minds.
“People often say, ‘What’s the point of joining? I can’t actually do anything.’ But I think that in Amnesty, this chapter, we all share the perspective that reaching a single person who has never heard of Amnesty is significant, and that can make a change. We are really not going to have a massive lasting impact on Amnesty’s greater campaigns. But making sure that those campaigns are spread, making sure that young people know that they are the future of these campaigns [remains important]. Because human rights issues are never going to disappear– they are always going to exist. Making sure that this generation is educated on what the issues are, informing them that there are easy ways to get involved, and providing that opportunity and access is really significant. And on a smaller scale, supporting these smaller organisations, like the one we have planned for the indigenous campaign, is also an impact that we can have.”
Lastly, I ask Lilith of her thoughts on divestment at the University, which has been a prominent topic in the past year.
“I do believe a university should divest and support divestment, especially regarding issues of such an extreme degree, such as the human rights violations in Palestine,” she says. “However, this is a harder objective to achieve, or a battle to win. I think it is equally important that a university diversifies the events and opportunities provided to its students so as to not only support firms that have not divested. I actually think that this is an easier goal to achieve for a university, especially because of the ongoing debates about whether a university should be political or not.”
Amnesty International at UofG is driven by students who will not wait for change to be made for them. In a world plagued by humanitarian crises and instability, Amnesty ensures that these issues are heard and spoken about on campus, taking part in a global movement to empower the youth to act.
Image Credit: Christian Lue on Unsplash
