“Failed leadership has gone global in the last year, with politicians responding to protests with brutality or indifference. Governments must show legitimate leadership and reject injustice by protecting the powerless and restraining the powerful. It is time to put people before corporations and rights before profits,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International Secretary General.

The vocal and enthusiastic support for the protest movements shown by many global and regional powers in the early months of 2011, has not translated into action. As Egyptians go to the polls to vote for a new president, it looks increasingly as if the opportunities for change created by the protesters are being squandered.

“In the last year it has all too often become clear that opportunistic alliances and financial interests have trumped human rights as global powers jockey for influence in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Salil Shetty.

“The language of human rights is adopted when it serves political or corporate agendas, and shelved when inconvenient or standing in the way of profit.”

A failure to intervene in Sri Lanka and inaction over crimes against humanity in Syria – one of Russia’s main customers for arms – left the UN Security Council looking redundant as a guardian of global peace. The emerging powerhouses of India, Brazil and South Africa have too often been complicit through their silence.

“There is a clear and compelling case for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation of crimes against humanity. The determination of some UN Security Council members to shield Syria at any cost leaves accountability for these crimes elusive and is a betrayal of the Syrian people,” said Salil Shetty.

Amnesty International Report 2012 documents specific restrictions on free speech in at least 91 countries as well as cases of people tortured or otherwise ill-treated in at least 101 countries – in many cases for taking part in demonstrations.

“Ousting individual leaders – however tyrannical – is not enough to deliver long-term change. Governments must uphold freedom of expression at home and abroad, take international responsibilities seriously, and invest in systems and structures that ensure justice, freedom and equality before the law.”

The UN meeting to agree an Arms Trade Treaty in July will be an acid test for politicians to place rights over self-interest and profit. Without a strong treaty, the UN Security Council’s guardianship of global peace and security seems doomed to failure; its permanent members wielding an absolute veto on any resolution despite being the world’s largest arms suppliers.

“Protesters have shown that change is possible. They have thrown down a gauntlet demanding that governments stand up for justice, equality and dignity. They have shown that leaders who don’t meet these expectations will no longer be accepted. After an inauspicious start 2012 must become the year of action,” said Salil Shetty.

Other global developments highlighted in Amnesty International Report 2012:

- Highly repressive states including China threw the full weight of their security apparatus into the suffocation of protest. There was no improvement in North Korea’s horrific human rights situation.

- In sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa uprisings resonated strongly with people – but excessive force was used against protesters in countries from Angola to Senegal to Uganda.

- Social protest gathered strength in the Americas, frequently bringing people into confrontation with powerful economic and political interests. Activists were threatened and killed, including in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

- In Russia, civic activism grew and the country saw its largest demonstrations since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but opposition voices were abused and systematically undermined.

- There was no sign of significant change in countries such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This year’s Eurovision Song Contest host, Azerbaijan, suppressed freedom of expression and 16 prisoners of conscience are still behind bars for raising their voices in 2011.

- Violence followed South Sudan’s vote for independence but the UN Security Council – along with the African Union’s Peace and Security Council – again failed to condemn abuses including indiscriminate bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces, or the Sudanese government’s closure of affected states to humanitarian organizations.

- In the Middle East and North Africa, as the uprisings occupied world attention, other deep-seated problems festered. Iran’s government was increasingly isolated, tolerated no dissent, and used the death penalty with an enthusiasm only outstripped by China, while Saudi Arabia cracked down on protesters.

- Israel maintained its blockade of Gaza, prolonging the humanitarian crisis and continued to expand illegal settlements in the West Bank. Palestinian political organizations Fatah and Hamas targeted each other’s supporters; Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups mounted tit-for-tat attacks in Gaza.

- Myanmar’s government took a pivotal decision to free more than 300 political prisoners and allow Aung San Suu Kyi to contest elections. An escalation of conflict-related human rights violations in ethnic minority areas, as well as continuing harassment and detention of activists, however, suggested limits to the reform.

- Trends included abuses against Indigenous communities in the Americas as drives to exploit resources intensified; worsening discrimination in Africa over people’s sexual orientation or gender identity; increased xenophobic rhetoric from some European politicians; and increased vulnerability to terrorist acts in Africa by Islamist armed groups.

- Progress including the global trend towards abolition of the death penalty; the erosion of impunity for past abuses in the Americas; and landmark steps towards justice in Europe with the arrests of General Ratko Mladić and Croatian Serb Goran Hadžić, to face trial for crimes committed in the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia.

In a presentation titles “Lessons from the Greek Debt Exchange:, at the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin, Institute of International Finance (IIF) chief Charles Dallara argued:

“We should understand in my view having spent a lot of time in Greece over the last 9 months, that what we are seeing there is not just an expression of frustration by the Greek people about quote austerity, but by an expression of frustrations of what they consider to see of 3 to 4 decades of really inadequate political leadership that has led them to this position, my sense, and I certainly don’t want to speak for the Greek people, but I’ve talked to a lot of people, and I had the privilege to live in Athens for two years a young naval officer so perhaps I feel I have my own touch of Greek roots, and my sense is that there is a profound sense of disappointment at where their political leadership from both the common parties that have guided them for most of the last decades has left them.

And a determination to seek new directions, by either new parties new leaders, or through the leaders of the old traditional parties trying to convince the Greek people that they see a way forward, and I think it’s going to take some time for this to shake out to allow the Greek democratic process to run its course. And I think it is incumbent on the rest of us, and that would include other European leaders, to pause in what has been a very popular game of how to tell the Greeks how to run their lives.”

“This is the leadership that created the United Nations and its founding Charter,” said Mr. Ban in a speech at the Atlantic Council Awards Dinner in Washington, where he was presented with the Distinguished International Leadership Award. “And this is the leadership that will keep its principles alive and strong,” he added. “If I were to speak like an economist, I might say we have an over-supply of problems – and a deficit of solutions. A deficit of leadership.”

The prevailing global state of affairs partly reflected the great changes that are transforming the modern world, with power shifting and the old order breaking down amid uncertainty, the Secretary-General said, adding that he believed the United Nations can, and must, be the solution to the world’s great challenges. “Engagement through the UN is the way forward – to share the costs and responsibilities of leadership – to uphold universal values – and to steer the world through this Great Transition,” Mr. Ban stated in his speech.

He stressed that the “five imperatives for collective global action” are climate change and sustainable growth and development; conflict prevention and disaster preparedness; ensuring universal human rights; supporting nations in transition to democracy; and giving women and the younger generation greater voice and opportunities.

“As I see it, justice and dignity are not abstractions. They are not mere aspirations. They are rights – the responsibilities of governments to deliver,” Mr. Ban said. “None of these ideas are alien to anyone here this evening. They are core American values – core trans-Atlantic values – increasingly widely shared around the world. Our challenge is to continue to spread these principles – this universal code. And that takes leadership.”