Many people, especially among the younger generation, when they are asked about , think of “” events, which was a worldwide tour of twenty benefit concerts that took place over a six week period in 1988.

Those concerts were held not to raise funds but to increase awareness of Amnesty and to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The shows featured Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel (see video below) and many others.

In actuality, Amnesty International, which is more commonly known as Amnesty or AI serves a very serious purpose and defines its mission as "to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights."

Peter Gabriel Shares His Own Experiences With Amnesty International

Founded in London in 1961 by English lawyer Peter Benenson, AI is meant to draw attention to human rights abuses and campaigns for compliance with international standards. The idea came to him while travelling in the London Underground, as he was reading of two Portuguese students who had been sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for having drunk a toast to liberty.

In his famous newspaper article The Forgotten Prisoners, Benenson later described his reaction as follows: "Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a story from somewhere of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions are unacceptable to his government…… The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done."

Amnesty International works to mobilize public opinion which exerts pressure on individuals who perpetrate abuses. The organization has been recognized as a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for its work and was awarded the United Nations Human Rights Prize.

Amnesty International drew together reports from countries where torture allegations seemed most persistent and organized an international conference on torture. It sought to influence public opinion in order to put pressure on national governments by organizing a campaign for the ‘Abolition of Torture’ which ran for several years.

AI’s membership increased from 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 by 1979. This growth in resources enabled an expansion of its program, ‘outside of the prison walls’, to include work on “disappearances”, the death penalty and the rights of refugees.

Throughout the 1980s, Amnesty International continued to campaign for prisoners of conscience and torture. New issues emerged, including extrajudicial killings; military, security and police transfers; political killings; and "disappearances."

Throughout the 1990s, Amnesty International continued to grow to a membership of over 2.2 million in over 150 countries and territories, led by Senegalese Secretary Genera Pierre Sane and continues to work on a wide range of issues and world events.

During the first half of the new decade, Amnesty International turned its attention to violence against women, controls on the world arms trade and concerns surrounding the effectiveness of the UN. Its membership, close to two million by 2005, continues to work for .