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Amnesty hands over electronic petition to UN

By Felicity Ussher

Published: Wednesday 09 December 1998

An electronic list of 500,000 signatures was presented to UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, yesterday as a commitment to human rights. The petition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ann Callaghan, campaign co-ordinator at Amnesty International, said its success was largely due to the efforts of the Australian team, who ran ads on Web pages and in the trade press. "They set up a chain email which was distributed via NGO [non-governmental organisations] networks," she told Silicon.com.

The email appeared in the UK via Unicef and The Leprosy Mission International. Electronic supporters of human rights were added to the names of real world observers of human rights, bringing the grand total to over 10 million signatures. Annan received the petition two days before the anniversary - which takes place tomorrow.

"This is probably something we need to do a lot more," said Callaghan. "We need to invest money into emailing people with up-to-date information on our campaigns."

Amnesty is planning to use email in its campaign to free Tibetan nun, Ngawang Sangdrol.