Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign human rights internationally recognized, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December, 1948). The organization's mission is to undertake research and action that focuses on preventing and ending abuses of the rights to mental and physical integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination. All of these, within the context of its work to promote human rights in its entirety ("About Amn.""). .
Historically, the concept of human rights has existed in European thought for many centuries dating back to the time of King John of England around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under a number names. After the king violated several ancient laws and customs by which England had been governed, his subjects forced him to sign the Magna Carta (or Great Charter) that lists a number of what later came to be known as human rights. Among these rights were the rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and be free from excessive taxes, establishing the right of widows who owned property to choose not to remarry, and establishing principles of due process and equality before the law that also contained provisions forbidding bribery and official misconduct. In other parts of the world, political and religious traditions also proclaimed the idea of human rights by calling on rulers to rule justly and compassionately, and also by establishing limits on their power over the lives, activities, and property of their citizens. ("A Short-, 1).
Later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, the concept of "natural rights- was proposed by several philosophers who defined it as "the rights belonging to a person by nature and because he was a human being, not by virtue of his citizenship in a particular country or membership in a particular religious or ethnic group.