The Irish section of Amnesty International has collected half of the one million signatures it hopes to get before next weekend in support of human rights as set out in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights.
This week Amnesty will be doubling its efforts to get the remaining 500,000 signatures needed to reach its ambitious target. The signatures are among the 60 million the organisation aims to collect around the world.
The Irish section has sent out 3.5 million cards for people to sign. "We are reaching people and places we have never reached before," said its director, Ms Mary Lawlor, yesterday.
"The Good Friday agreement has made this an appropriate time to talk about human rights and to build a human rights culture in Ireland."
The campaign was launched nearly four weeks ago on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, by U2. Among those who have signed so far are the President, Mrs McAleese, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Ms Mary Robinson, all the members of the Cabinet, Northern Ireland Secretary Dr Mo Mowlam, former US ambassador Ms Jean Kennedy Smith, SDLP leader Mr John Hume, poet Seamus Heaney, actors Gabriel Byrne, Anjelica Huston, and Jeremy Irons, singer Van Morrison, and the Irish soccer team, led by manager Mick McCarthy.
Today an Amnesty "road train", sponsored by Cronin Movers, will be in Kilkenny beside the castle at 12.30 and at Red Square (Baron Strand Street) in Waterford at 6 p.m. Tomorrow it will be in Cork; on Wednesday in Limerick and Galway; on Thursday in Galway and Sligo; and on Friday in Navan, ending up at the Mansion House, Dublin, on Friday afternoon.
Counting the signatures will begin on Friday and continue over the weekend. Ms Lawlor emphasised that all signatures must be returned to Amnesty's offices at 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 by next Saturday, November 21st.
Signature postcards are widely available in churches, libraries, shops and even railway stations. The four Catholic archbishops and the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin signed yesterday.
Some supermarket chains, large shops and banks - such as Supervalu, Centra, Superquinn, Tesco, Boots, Body Shop, Burgerking, National Irish Bank and the EBS building society - have put cards on display. Others, including Dunnes, Spar, Easons, Champion Sports, Xtra Vision, the Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and the Irish Permanent, have declined to do so.
Signing on-line is also an option at www.amnesty.ie or at www.paddynet.com/amnesty, the comedy website that features live footage from Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, Pauline McLynn and the late Dermot Morgan.
The signatures will be added to the many millions collected by Amnesty all over the world and will be presented to the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, at a ceremony in Paris on December 8th to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
"They will be presented, in the form of a sculpture representing the `people of the world' in the declaration's preamble, to the world's governments through Kofi Annan," said Mary Lawlor yesterday.
"The message from the people will be that the governments have promised to protect those basic human rights and it's time that they started to do so."