On Friday the 13th of March, a group of students from SIS attended Amnesty International’s annual A-Day event in Stockholm. A-Day is an opportunity for high school students all over Sweden to attend a free seminar with Amnesty. The events consists of an interactive presentation of what Amnesty is and does.

A group of six students and a teacher from Stockholm International School joined many other schools at Bio Rea in Södermalm to experience the seminar. The seminar consisted of a scenario and a presentation. During the scenario, the participants in the room had to take a stand on whether or not to use torture to extract information from a person. This person had information about the location of a bomb. If the police were not able to get him to tell them where it was, there would be loss of human lives. The participants had to take a stance on the use of torture by going to either the “yes” or “no” side of the room. Most of the participants chose to not use torture to get the information. This was the introduction to an interactive presentation, where the presenters asked questions to the participants throughout the duration of the presentation. The presentation focused on the main issues that Amnesty focuses on around the world. The presenters used examples from different countries to show how human rights are violated, and what Amnesty is doing to help those that are getting their rights violated. There were stories of people’s lives from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Russia, South Africa and Sweden. The stories were very powerful and show how much people’s attitudes vary in different parts of the world. The students that went to the event felt that they received relevant information about human rights and what Amnesty is and does. Tyra Küller (11C) says; “A-Day gave me greater insight into how universal laws are violated all over the world every single day and what we, as citizens in a developed country, can do to bring justice to the victims.” This opinion seemed to be shared by the other students that participated.

The goal of this seminar was to encourage the participants to further engage with Amnesty International. Most of the students that went to A-day from SIS were already members of the school’s Amnesty group. The DP Amnesty group at SIS is an official youth group. The group works to spread Amnesty International’s messages and campaigns to students in our school. They arrange events such as International World Day Against Death Penalty and presentations to the students. Currently they are working on a campaign against torture and hope to involve the students of the school, to shed light on this global issue. The group is open to new members and encourages everyone who is interested in human rights to join.