In July, Amnesty International UK published a report called “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK.” Written by Chiara Capraro, Amnesty’s gender justice director, the document prompted complaints from the organizations it had labelled “anti-rights,” among them feminist, lesbian, and gay groups (including the Lesbian Project, which I co-founded with Kathleen Stock) as well as a number of other bona fide human rights organizations. The report’s principal charge was “transphobia.”
This was not the first time Amnesty had defamed organizations standing up for the rights of women and girls. It had already published “Like a Snowball: The Growth and Impact of the Gender-Critical Movement in the UK” in May, though that report had gone largely unnoticed. One organization named as “anti-rights” in both reports was Beira's Place, which was founded (and is solely funded) by author and philanthropist JK Rowling.
“Longstanding supporters of Amnesty were dismayed.”
As the reports circulated, longstanding supporters of Amnesty were dismayed and outraged to see the organization turn on individuals, groups and services that were, in the main, set up to counter human rights abuses against women. Initially, Amnesty claimed that the report’s “use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK,” and a spokesman said—implausibly—that it had been “uploaded without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions,” adding that it remains “committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.” Before long, the heat was turned up significantly, especially when Rowling offered to fund any women’s organization wishing to take legal action against Amnesty. But the icing on the cake was a strongly worded letter from lawyers for Beira’s Place in mid-July, demanding that the report be withdrawn, that a public apology be issued, and that an external review examine how it had come to be published. On July 28, after new information had come to light, the Beira’s Place lawyers sent a second letter, this time warning that the organization had been “maliciously defamed.”
It wasn’t just those directly affected by the reports who had objections. Iseult White is the granddaughter of Seán MacBride, the Irish republican activist, politician, and diplomat who co-founded Amnesty alongside Peter Benenson. She tells me she is “appalled” at the direction the once revered human rights organization has taken. “Releasing that report,” she says, “is essentially a form of propaganda: designating groups as not worthy of speech because they’re ‘anti-rights,’ and not worthy of freedom of association.” Amnesty’s “original approach,” she adds, “was based on meticulously researching a case, establishing that this was a prisoner of conscience, and building a campaign around that: letter-writing, cards, and so on. It was based on valid, real research. There’s no research behind that report; it’s just a set of opinions.” There is little question whose opinions those are. In November 2025, when Capraro, the second report’s author, appeared on the Guilty Feminist podcast, she said of the so-called anti-rights organizations: “In the same way that we are a global feminist and human rights movement, they are like the dark side. And they’re smart, they work globally, they collaborate.”