Amnesty International UK: Rights and Wrongs Part 2. A troublesome audit trail
Introduction
This blog updates our previous post, which archived material associated with Amnesty International UK’s decision to publish a report (titled A Growing Threat) containing defamatory material about a large number of UK groups who do not agree with its position on sex and self-declared gender.
The post can be accessed here:
As noted previously, following a public backlash, Amnesty International UK removed the report from its website within two days of publication. Both Amnesty International (the parent organisation) and Amnesty International UK then sought to distance themselves from the publication. Amnesty International described the report as not aligned with its values and emphasised that the UK branch was independent. Amnesty International UK framed the report as an isolated administrative error and expressed ‘regret’ that it was uploaded to its website.
This post traces how Amnesty International UK responded to the controversy in more detail. First, it shows how Amnesty International UK initially sought to defend the findings in the press, before then backtracking, whilst also refusing to apologise, or to identify responsibility for the report, including authorship. We then set out the difficulty Amnesty International UK faces in trying to pass this off as an isolated, unrepresentative incident.
Several more organisations have written to Amnesty International UK since we last updated our first blog. Published correspondence and related articles collated by Tribunal Tweets can be accessed here. Our second letter to Amnesty International UK is available here.
How the controversy unfolded: a timeline
Wednesday 8 July
Amnesty International UK published A Growing Threat report. The document is dated 8 July and appears to have been published on their website sometime that day.
Shoreditch event
On the same day the report’s apparent author (Chiara Capraro, Amnesty International UK Gender Justice Programme Director) participated at an event attended by funders at the Shoreditch Arts Club, organised by the Civic Power Fund, at which the report was discussed. It is unclear from the public record how much information about the publication was shared with how many people in how much detail. When asked for comment by The Times, Amnesty International UK did not dispute that this had occurred, stating only that they had not organised the event.
Thursday 9 July
Amnesty report posted on social media
On Thursday 9 July 2026, shortly after 8am, Sex Matters CEO Maya Forstater drew attention to the report on social media, tagging Amnesty International UK in her post.
Friday 10 July
Initial press coverage
The press picked up the report the next day, with coverage continuing over the weekend. Some media outlets approached Amnesty International UK and some of the defamed organisations for comments, whilst others approached the report less critically. Examples are shown below. Other reports include The Scotsman (JK Rowling’s rape support centre labelled ‘anti-rights group’ by Amnesty) and the Scottish Daily Mail (Fury as Amnesty brands JK’s rape charity ‘anti-rights’ over Potter author’s trans views).
The Herald: Beira’s Place, founded by JK Rowling, labelled ‘anti-rights’
The Herald covered the report on Friday 10 July. The piece, which named us and included a response from For Women Scotland, was online by mid-morning. At this juncture, Amnesty International UK sought to defend its publication. An Amnesty International UK spokesperson said:
The organisations we listed are campaigning against human rights protections for trans people, in the context of a general backsliding of human rights protections for LGBTI people, migrants, as well as women and girls across Europe and the US”
We are seeing a pattern of anti-trans and anti-abortion campaigns advancing together in other countries, especially in the US, making the same arguments and adopting the same strategies as the organisations we listed in our report. The impact of these policies on the lives of those who are affected is significant and damaging.
We know this is a very fraught issue in this country. Our research is not about a single individual but the environment that is being created by organisations promoting policies that are not only detrimental to the rights of a minority, but ultimately to the rights that are crucial to protecting women and girls.
The Times: JK Rowling’s support centre for women is ‘anti-rights’, says Amnesty’
A report in The Times included a response from For Women Scotland, noting that Rowling and Beira’s Place had declined to comment. The Times picked up on the line Amnesty International UK had given to The Herald, stating:
Amnesty said its report is intended to document organisations and movements that it believes are seeking to roll back established human rights protections, particularly those affecting LGBT people and women. Rowling and Beira’s Place declined to comment.
The National: JK Rowling’s sexual assault support centre branded ‘anti-rights’ by Amnesty
The National newspaper reported the findings at face value. It did not carry any new comment from Amnesty International UK. The piece appears to have been published around 10am. Around midday, the National promoted the article on its X account:
… a new report from the human rights organisation Amnesty has been published which looks into the “rise of an anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people in the UK”.
Amnesty has added 51 gender-critical groups to the report since last year – among them Beira’s Place, campaign group For Women Scotland, and policy group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie.
The LGB Alliance, the Seen Network, ADF International, Turning Point UK, and Labour Women’s Declaration are also listed…
Beira’s Place has been approached for comment.
Pink News: Amnesty International declares JK Rowling’s sexual assault crisis centre ‘anti-rights’
Pink News also covered the report uncritically. It stated:
Included at the end of the report is a list of “anti-rights organisations” that have been identified by Amnesty.
Beira’s Place is recorded as a registered company under the “gender critical” section alongside groups like LGB Alliance, For Women Scotland and Sex Matters, among others.
Other “anti-rights actor” types include anti-abortion, Christian right policy/advocacy and conversion practices.Onset of complaints from defamed organisations
On Friday afternoon we wrote a short letter to the Chairs of the Amnesty International UK Section and Charitable Board requesting evidence to support its assertions. Other organisations who wrote to the Chairs that day include Labour’s Women Declaration, and Thoughtful Therapists, whom the report listed as engaged in ‘conversion practices’. We listed the first of these letters in our earlier blog.
More organisations defamed by the report submitted complaints to the Chairs. Copies of published correspondence, including subsequent follow up letters already sent by some organisations in response to Amnesty International UK’s initial reaction to the letters it received, are available here.
Taking the report down
Having defended the report earlier in the day, by mid-evening of Friday 10 July Amnesty International UK had removed the report from its website, as picked up by freelance journalist Gethin Chamberlain.
Sunday 12 July
Temporary removal
Web archives show that by Sunday 12 July Amnesty International UK had published a statement, saying that it had temporarily removed the report, subject to an internal review:
We have temporarily removed this briefing while it undergoes an internal review. Amnesty International UK remains committed to researching and campaigning on human rights issues, incorporating our long standing and explicit commitment to gender justice, including the rights of women, LGBTQI and trans people.
Sorry is the hardest word
On the same day The Herald reported that Amnesty International UK had refused to state whether it would apologise to Beira’s Place.
The Herald asked whether the charity would be apologising to Beira’s Place for including the sexual abuse centre in its report.
However, it re-emphasised the decision to remove the report was “temporary” while a review takes place.Monday 13 July
Regret
Web archives show that by Monday 13 July Amnesty International UK had updated its statement to express ‘regret’ at uploading the briefing:
We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions.
Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.
We remain committed to defending human rights, including both the rights of women and the rights of trans people.
Human rights protections are strongest when they apply equally to everyone, and no community should be singled out for unfair treatment or denied their dignity and rights.This text was also sent to organisations who had written to complain about their inclusion in the report. Some, like us, received only this, while others had some extra content, such as a statement that Amnesty needed more time to consider its response, we have been told.
Amnesty International distances itself
On the same day, Amnesty International, the global umbrella body for national sections, appeared to distance itself from the report. It told The Herald that it was not involved in the development of the anti-rights briefing and supported the decision for the report to be withdrawn:
This briefing was developed and published by Amnesty International UK (AI UK), one of 72 national entities in the Amnesty International movement.
AI UK has since removed the briefing from its website and has initiated an internal review process.
Amnesty’s International Secretariat was not involved in the development of this briefing and is awaiting the results of AI UK’s review. We support the decision to withdraw the report from AI UK’s website.
Amnesty International conducts independent research and campaigns on human rights issues worldwide, and works alongside victims and communities on the frontlines of the struggle for dignity and justice. This work includes a long‑standing and explicit commitment to gender justice, including the rights of women, LGBTQI and trans people.Beira’s Place statement
As we noted in our last blog, Beira’s Place, the sexual violence support centre founded by JK Rowling, made its first comment.
BEIRA’S PLACE RESPONSE TO REPORT BY AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL UK
Responding to the report (‘A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK’) published by Amnesty International UK on 9 July, Beira’s Place CEO Lesley Johnston said:
“Beira’s Place was established in 2022 to address an unmet need for a single sex support service for female survivors of male violence. We are proud of our work and we know how much our service means to the women who have used it. It is inexplicable that Beira’s Place has been listed as an “anti-rights organisation” in a report published last week by Amnesty International. This is deeply offensive to Beira’s Place staff who work day in day out to support survivors, and to the women who need and use our service. We will continue to focus on the needs of the women who come to us and, through the integrated work we do with partners such as Edinburgh’s Equally Safe Committee, we remain committed to a vision where women and girls can live in a world free of sexual violence.”
— Lesley Johnston, CEO, Beira’s PlaceTuesday 14 July
Beira’s Place response
On 14 July lawyers acting on behalf of Beira’s Place warned Amnesty International UK that unless it permanently withdrew the report and published an apology on its website that it would face legal action.
Early day parliamentary motion
Also, on 14 July Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi tabled a motion to the UK Parliament condemning the report. It stated:
That this House expresses extreme concern at Amnesty International UK’s report entitled A Growing Threat: the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK, published on 8 July; condemns its depiction and listing of organisations defending the rights of women, girls, children, and gay and bisexual people as anti-rights on the basis of them being gender critical; further condemns its depiction and listing of organisations of parents and of clinicians as promoting conversion practices; notes that organisations depicted as supposedly anti-rights includes many grassroots women’s rights organisations doing vital work domestically and internationally with vulnerable women and children, and a rape crisis centre and support service for female survivors of male violence; further notes that gender critical belief is a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010 and reflects the views of the majority of the public; also notes that it is perfectly legitimate to organise around the protected characteristic of sex and to offer single-sex spaces, as clarified by the recent Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Government; recognises that such organisation, work and services are fundamentally important; also condemns the report for making unevidenced characterisations; acknowledges the damaging impact of such baseless accusations for the small grassroots charities and organisations listed; and calls on Amnesty International to withdraw the report, issue a formal public correction and apology acknowledging the reputational harm, and pledge that Amnesty staff who hold gender critical beliefs can express such beliefs without fear of bullying or harassment.
At the time of writing, six MPs have signed the motion.
Wednesday 15 July
Permanent removal
When asked about the letter from Beira’s Place by The Herald, Amnesty International UK confirmed that the report would not be republished. A spokesperson said:
We are aware of the letter and are engaging constructively with the process. We can confirm that we will not be republishing the briefing.
Thursday 16 July
The Charity Commission
On 16 July the charity Sex Matters sent a joint letter, co-signed by forty organisations defamed by Amnesty International UK (including ourselves) to Dame Julia Unwin, chair of the Charity Commission, calling for a reset on the culture of intolerance towards gender-critical views in the charitable sector.
The same day it was reported that Amnesty International UK had referred itself to the Charity Commission by submitting a Serious Incident Report, a requirement placed on charity trustees in certain circumstances. Amnesty International UK said that it had not launched a formal investigation.
The Charity Commission said ‘We are assessing the matters raised to determine what, if any, role there might be for us as charity law regulator.’
Friday 17 July
Responding to public complaints
Having submitted a complaint to Amnesty International UK, on 17 July Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser posted his response from the AI UK CEO on X. She assured Mr Fraser that ‘I take your concern very seriously indeed’.
Documenting and campaigning against human rights abuses affecting women and girls has been, and always will be, core to our work – from Afghanistan to Iran and beyond. Our recent campaigning has supported victims of forced marriage in Burkina Faso, backed survivors of female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone, documented and campaigned for accountability for survivors of Boko Haram in Nigeria and supported the work of women human rights defenders around the world.
I understand your concerns about the briefing that should not have been uploaded to the Amnesty website and can assure you that I take your concern very seriously indeed.
Thank you for the support that you have given to Amnesty.
Yours sincerely
Kerry
Kerry Moscogiuri
Chief Executive
Amnesty International UK
Pronouns: She, her, hersThis statement is not part of any other response we have seen.
For example, a separate response to a member of the public sent on the same day from the Supporter Communications Manager received no such assurances, only a reiteration of the boilerplate wording used in reaction to initial letters from organisations that Amnesty International UK had named, and to press queries:
As we explained in the statement subsequently published on our website:
We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions….
The briefing should not have been published without completing the established internal review process. As it did not complete that process, it should not be treated as an approved statement of Amnesty International United Kingdom Section’s position.
We confirm that the briefing has been withdrawn and that we have no intention of republishing it.
Yours sincerely
….
Supporter Communications Manager
Amnesty International UKOur follow up response
The boilerplate response prompted further complaints as to its inadequacy.
Our follow up response sent on 17 July 2026 is available here. We set out our continuing unhappiness, and the actions we think Amnesty International UK needs to take. We set out why we believe publication of the report on 8 July is not credibly seen as an isolated incident, but as a part of a corporately sanctioned programme of work targeting the organisations named. Our letter was also covered in The Herald.
We are awaiting a response.
Sunday 19 July
Refusal to reveal who approved the report or authorship
On Sunday 19 July The Herald reported that Amnesty International UK had refused to disclose where responsibility for the report lay:
The Herald has attempted to seek answers from Amnesty International UK on who signed off on the report, however the organisation refused to answer the specific questions. The charity said the report was published online by Amnesty International UK on July 8, 2026 and was not promoted externally or on social media.
It also denied any promotion of the report and refused to disclose the author, assumed to be its gender justice programme director:
It refused to confirm whether the report was written by Chiara Capraro, the gender justice programme director for Amnesty UK. However, Capraro has addressed ‘anti-rights’ the organisation’s work to unearth anti-rights movements publicly.
Capraro described the gender critical movement as a “whipped up moral panic” and compared backers to far-right campaigners.In the same piece, Amnesty International UK told The Herald:
The briefing uses language that does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed on July 10, 2026 …
We are conducting a thorough review of into how [sic] this serious issue occurred and are implementing additional measures to ensure our internal governance, approval and publication processes are robust and consistently followed.
Was this an isolated mistake?
After initially defending the findings, both Amnesty International and Amnesty International UK sought to distance themselves from the report. This is unconvincing at best. Rather, the now deleted report was part of a wider package of work on ‘anti-rights’, most notably evident in its Like a Snowball: the Growth and Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK report, published by Amnesty International UK in May 2025 (we are not linking the report as it has been named as a further potential defamatory document in responses to Amnesty).
Like a Snowball: the Growth and Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK
The Like a Snowball report warns of the ‘growth and influence’ of the gender critical movement, describing it as ‘worrying, made normal and supported by the media.’
Fifty-one ‘gender critical actors’
A ‘mapping’ exercise undertaken for the report identified fifty-one ‘gender critical actors’ which are named in the Technical Explainer, including ourselves. The Executive Summary states (emphasis added):
This briefing examines the nature and role of gender critical (GC) actors. Even though their starting point on issues of gender is different from those of actors such as ADF and other ultra conservative Christian groups, their objectives in relation to trans
people are remarkably similar.
The growth and influence of the GC movement have been worrying, made normal and supported by the media. Our research shows that the media has produced a disproportionate amount of coverage about trans people from 2020 to 2025, and the
words ‘gender’ and ‘critical’ have become common in such stories. Most importantly, the voices of trans people have been almost completely absent.
The mapping identified 51 GC actors, most of which are informal. However, two of the most well-known groups, LGB Alliance and Sex Matters, are registered UK charities, while others are registered companies.
Both the report and related Amnesty International UK promotional material (see below) paint gender critical beliefs as variously transphobic, anti-trans, and exclusionary (emphases added).
Transphobia, like other kinds of prejudice, is a widespread problem in society that existed before the current GC movement. But the origins of the GC movement in the UK can be traced back to 2017-2018, when both the Scottish and Westminster governments held public consultations on amending the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA). (page 4)
Even though GC actors’ perspective on what they call ‘gender ideology’ is different from that of ultra conservative Christian groups, in our assessment they share the same goal when it comes to removing legal protections for trans people. (page 7, emphasis added)
Organised opposition to the rights of trans people emerged at the time of consultation to reform the GRA, in 2017/18. This is reflected in the mapping, with only 3 of 51 organisations existing prior to 2017. (page 19, emphasis added)
Recommendations for journalists include:
Qualify GC and explain that it is an ideological stance that seeks to restrict the rights of trans people held by some lobby groups.
(page 23)
Media promotion
The report was press released by Amnesty International UK on 21 May 2026, and promoted on its Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky accounts.
The press release labelled gender critical organisation as ‘anti-trans’. A comment by Chiara Capraro, Amnesty International UK’s Gender Justice Programme Director said:
This research provides stark evidence of how anti-trans organisations have shaped media coverage and political debate in the UK since 2017.
There is nothing balanced about the way trans people’s lives are reported. Anti-trans narratives dominate coverage and are often presented as fact, while trans people themselves are pushed to the margins or erased entirely.
This is not happening organically. What we are seeing is a coordinated and increasingly well-resourced effort to roll back trans people’s rights and reshape public debate. The consequences are real, affecting trans people’s equality, safety and wellbeing across the UK.
Trans people have become a lightning rod in wider culture wars, with harmful narratives amplified across powerful platforms, shaping public perceptions.
Trans people may be the immediate target, but powerful forces are at work to roll back our hard-won freedoms and rewrite the rules on whose rights, bodies and lives deserve protection Anyone who cares about equality and human rights must consider this an alarm bell and make clear that this kind of bias has no place in our society.
Instagram, Amnesty International UK, 21 May 2026. Accessed 7 July 2026
Facebook, Amnesty International UK, 21 May. Accessed 22 July 2026.
Bluesky
On 1 June 2026 Amnesty International UK posted a video from its gender justice spokeswoman, Chiara Capraro on Bluesky, promoting the report. Ms Capraro stated its research had found that the number of ‘anti-trans organisations’ had risen from three in 2017 to 51 and formed “part of a global anti-trans network”. The video remains available online.
Bluesky, Amnesty International UK, 1 June 2026. Accessed 22 July 2026.
On publication the external academic researcher employed by Amnesty International UK to undertake linguistic analysis for the report referred to media coverage as dominated by ‘anti-trans campaigners’:
UK Parliament briefing
An Amnesty International UK parliamentary briefing for Pride Month 2026 reiterated the ‘51 gender-critical anti-trans organisations’ narrative, telling Members of Parliament that (emphases added):
Amnesty International UK has traced a growing anti-trans movement in the UK which has been organising since 2018 to stop the proposed reform of the Gender Reform Act. Only 3 anti-trans groups existed before 2017 and now there are 51. ‘Gender critical’ anti-trans narratives have been normalised by the press.
Wilful blindness?
When asked about the Like a Snowball report (in light of the withdrawn Growing Threat report), Amnesty International UK failed to mention the mapping exercise, focusing only on its media analysis. On 16 July an Amnesty International UK spokesperson told The Times that the report (emphasis added):
… examines the role of mainstream media coverage in shaping public debate about trans issues in the UK. Among its findings, it reported that four major UK newspapers published nearly 17,000 articles on trans-related topics over a five-year period, equivalent to around nine articles per day. The report argues that trans people have become a highly contested subject in public discourse, while trans voices have often been underrepresented in that coverage.
At the time of writing, both the Like a Snowball report and Amnesty International UK webpage ‘Uncovering a growing anti-human rights movement’ remain online. The latter states:
There is a growing anti-human rights movement in the UK, targeting our reproductive freedoms, our access to abortion, and the rights of LGBTI people.
Between November 2024 and June 2025, we have uncovered a rapidly expanding network of organisations working to undermine human rights protections and spread shame and fear.
This is a deliberate and coordinated attack, led by people who are weaponising misinformation, fabricating moral panic and exploiting existing prejudice to sow divisions.
The goal of these well-funded campaigns, which take inspiration from movements in the US, is to roll back our hard-won rights, undermine equality, and rewrite the rules on who deserves dignity and freedom.
The Like a Snowball publication forms part of a now-familiar pattern of extreme misrepresentation of those who have spoken up in the UK for sex as a category in law, policy and practice specifically from the perspective of women, lesbians and gay men, and safeguarding children and young people. While the report does not use the ‘anti-rights’ slur and refers to named individual organisations in basic factual terms, the fifty-one organisations covered are nonetheless collectively described as ‘anti-trans’ and depicted as wishing to restrict the rights of others, in what amounts to an exercise in reputational damage.
Further back: Amnesty International UK’s interventions on gender recognition reform
Amnesty International UK’s wider promotion of gender identity ideology goes back well over a decade. Since 2014 it has lobbied for legal gender recognition without a lower age limit (see here and here). Writing in support of Scottish gender recognition reform in 2018, the alleged author of A Growing Threat Chiara Capraro praised violence against women and girls (VAWG) organisations that (unlike Beira’s Place) provided services to men who identified as women:
Feminism has lots to gain by being trans-inclusive. While I was reading responses to the consultation this, from the Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre in Dundee, resonated with me: “We are aware that there is discourse which suggests that a system of self-declaration would be a threat to women’s safe spaces. This is not our viewpoint. We want to emphasise that we already welcome self-identifying trans women into our safe spaces, that their inclusion does not in any way determine the safety of that space and that to suggest otherwise would be a disservice not only to our trans service users, but to the trans women working within our sector creating those safe spaces every day.
Building on its ‘anti-rights’ theme, an Amnesty International UK briefing published in December 2024 said:
…anti-rights actors take a legitimate and vital issue such as male violence against women and women’s right to safety and use it to rally against trans people accessing spaces aligned with their gender and to attempt to strip the right of trans people to have their gender legally recognised.
As noted previously, Amnesty International UK unsuccessfully intervened in For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers. An explainer on its submission said the case sought to ‘erode human rights protections’(emphasis in original).
In many countries groups that want to limit the autonomy of women and LGBT+ people are bringing legal challenges to erode human rights protections. Whether it is the right to legal gender recognition, the recognition of LGBT+ families or the right to access healthcare and abortion services the arguments tend to be very similar, if not the same. This is one of those cases.
On publication of its written intervention, Amnesty UK stated clearly on its website that it did not believe that excluding men from women only spaces as a matter of policy should be lawful (emphasis in original).
Amnesty reiterates that the Equality Act provides a process which enables the exclusion of trans people from single sex services, if it is a ‘proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim’, meaning that there is a high threshold to be able to justify exclusion. A blanket policy of barring trans women from single sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim. If the Equality Act did not intend to consider trans women as women, it would not have included a process for exclusion in the first place.
Following the UK Supreme Court ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) developed an interim Code of Practice for service providers. In response to this, in October 2025 Amnesty International UK and other transactivist groups called for the EHRC to be downgraded as an internationally accredited human rights body.
In a statement published by Amnesty International UK in October 2025, Chiara Capraro said:
The EHRC has for several years unhelpfully pitted the rights of women and trans people against each other. Its proposals for a code of practice would mandate services to violate trans people’s right to privacy and dignity. Cis people would be affected too, especially cis women who present as gender non-conforming.
This is clearly a state of emergency for trans people, but the EHRC’s dereliction of its duty could extend to other marginalised groups. At a time when forces hostile to human rights are on the rise in the UK and globally, we cannot afford to have a national human rights institution that is not fit for purpose.
Writing for Pink News in December 2025, an Amnesty International UK Research and Campaigns Assistant said:
A 2025 ruling by the UK Supreme Court defined womanhood based on biological sex, meaning that transgender women in the UK could be denied access to single-sex toilets; although the Court reiterated their legal protection, they have to endure the constant interference with their bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. We become the spectators of a loud minority of cis women claiming to fight patriarchal oppression by turning against us; us, who belong to communities that have been substantially harmed by the same patriarchal forces who oppress them. Ironic, isn’t it? Groups of women who have been fighting against their oppression and restriction on the grounds of biologically essentialist claims (women being caring, weaker and less able to hold positions of authority, having to become stay-at-home mothers, and so forth) instrumentalising essentialist claims to exclude other groups of people. Those women who feel threatened about their very identity on the grounds of trans women’s anatomies.
Amnesty International (the parent organisation) highlighted the ruling in its 2026 Annual Report, stating that ‘some companies and charities brought in harmful trans-exclusionary policies following the judgment (2026: 381)
A troublesome audit trail
Amnesty International UK’s main difficulty in managing the fallout from A Growing Threat stems from the fact that the withdrawn report aligns precisely with a policy direction that it has vigorously pursued for over a decade. It also clearly builds on specific new work undertaken over the past year in relation to a group of organisations, including our own.
Amnesty International UK has stated that the removed report was uploaded to its website without going through its ‘established internal review processes’.
But as the introduction to the now-deleted report explained, it was simply an update to its wider body of ’anti-rights’ work – most notably the Like a Snowball report, which identified the 51 organisations subsequently defamed as ‘anti-rights’ by Amnesty International UK, and remains fully accessible at the time of writing (emphases added).
In July 2025, Amnesty International UK released a study of 65 anti-rights groups in the UK, 32 of which spent £106 million from 2019 to 2023, a rise of more than a third [The anti-rights movement]. These actors were divided into categories based on their primary interest or characteristic; however, the distinctions between categories are often blurred. For example, the Christian Institute is classified as an ultra-conservative Christian policy and advocacy organisation, but its work encompasses abortion, trans rights, education and other issues.
These organisations form part of a wider anti-rights ecosystem—a network of groups that work on different issues but share similar goals and often support each other’s efforts to roll back human rights protections…
This briefing is an update of the findings published in July 2025 and includes gender-critical organisations, which were examined in detail in a separate briefing published in May 2026 [Like a Snowball].
This is a fast-moving environment, therefore the report provides a snapshot of the UK anti-rights ecosystem at the end of June 2026.
A wealth of other material that conflates advocating for women and girls on the basis of their sex with an ‘anti-rights’ position – from training courses (see also here) to social media posts, parliamentary submissions and submissions to the Press Recognition Panel (here) – remains available online.
Further, contrary to the impression of a report that slipped through the review process, Amnesty International UK is not disputing reports that it was previewed at an event on 8 July (The Times, 17 July 2026).
Set in this context, the retraction of a single report appears to be little more than minimalist damage limitation, rather than serious engagement with the systematic failures of an organisation founded to campaign for prisoners of conscience. That the list of defamed organisations continues to be circulated online using copies archived from its site prior to its removal, and abuse continues to be directed towards those organisations as a result of the report, adds to Amnesty International UK’s considerable difficulties here.
Its greatest difficulty in trying to pass this off as an isolated system failure, however, is the strength of the counter-evidence to that, on its own site and elsewhere.
X post, 19 July 2026. Names of organisations redacted