Amnesty International is 40 this year. The movement was formed in 1961 from the vision of a single man, Peter Benenson. Incensed by a newspaper article depicting the fate of two Portuguese students jailed for raising a toast to "freedom" in a restaurant, he wrote an appeal on their behalf which was published worldwide.

This resulted in over 1,000 offers of support for the idea of an international campaign to protect human rights. Amnesty International was born. It has striven ever since to ensure the observance of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Since then the movement has grown hugely in terms of size and stature. Today more than a million people in over 150 countries claim membership. The movement campaigns to free all prisoners of conscience, to ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners, and to abolish the death penalty, torture and extrajudicial executions or "disappearances".

The Irish section was formed early, in 1962, with Sean MacBride as its chairman. Today the section's membership numbers over 10,000. Throughout its history it has played a distinguished role in the movement. The great Sean MacBride went on to become chair of the International Committee of Amnesty for 15 years. Others played equally important roles.

The Irish section forms a key part of Amnesty's global effort, which deals with the cases of 47,000 prisoners of conscience. For many of these the miserable reality remains that without Amnesty there is nothing.

In the words of an oft-quoted Vietnamese prisoner of conscience: "We could always tell when international protests were taking place . . . The food rations increased and the beatings were fewer. Letters from abroad were translated and passed around from cell to cell, but when the letters stopped, the dirty food and repression started again."

Amnesty's work is as relevant and urgent today as ever. Its latest annual report documents 61 extrajudicial executions, 63 prisoners of conscience and cases of torture in at least 125 countries.

The organisation remains impartial; when you read something in an Amnesty briefing note it is generally true. Members of Amnesty work on behalf of individual prisoners, not to change systems of government. They do not work for the release of prisoners of conscience in their own countries, except in cases of capital punishment or refugee issues.

Amnesty has adopted this stance to remove suspicion of political motivation among governments. Accuracy and impartiality have ensured its lasting credibility and success.

Amnesty is also vital in getting information about human rights abuses out into the media and to the wider world. Take the present situation in Aceh and Papua in Indonesia. Amnesty has been to the fore in spreading the word about injustices there, which, I suspect, would have gone largely unnoticed in the West.

In April the Indonesian President issued a "presidential instruction" on "comprehensive steps towards resolving the problems of Aceh". The instruction has resulted in renewed military operations by Indonesian troops against the people of Aceh in a worsening of the already serious human rights situation.

In the continuing conflict between Indonesian troops and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) human rights defenders, journalists, humanitarian workers and political activists have been targeted specifically. As with the situation in East Timor, Amnesty is to the fore in getting the truth out. Ireland continues to play an honourable role in that unsettled land.

AMNESTY has played a similar role in highlighting the situation in Papua, where Indonesian government forces face the pro-independence militia group, the Papua Taskforce, and a population seeking independence.

Most recently Amnesty has highlighted the fears for the safety of human rights defenders in the region, such as Yohanes Bonay. They have also highlighted fears for the safety of individuals such as Martinus Daisiwa, who has been tortured and shot in the leg by police in Papua. He remains at risk. Were it not for Amnesty we would not know of any of these people.

Last year when I visited China and Tibet with the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs I recall how the Amnesty briefing on Tibet was especially informative and trustworthy. Using the information therein the committee was able to question the Chinese authorities as to the human rights position there.

We raised the names of the missing and of the disappeared, including that of Panchen Lama, who has been missing since 1995, and the case of Ngawang Sangdrol, a nun who was arrested and detained for 21 years for chanting political slogans.

Amnesty sometimes get it wrong, however. The advertisements for the Irish section's recent anti-racism campaign were poorly thought out and make the movement seem hysterical.

The advertisements linking Government Ministers to racism, however tenuously or inextricably, is wrong and has no basis in fact. I understand that Amnesty would have probably put the faces of ministers from any political party which happened to be in power on the posters to attract attention, that this is not an antiPD or anti-Fianna Fail campaign. Yet it was unfair to those portrayed. Furthermore it damages the reputation for accuracy and impartiality central to the continued success of Amnesty International.

dandrews@irish-times.ie