Amnesty loses five bosses after report on toxic workplace

Five of the seven members of the senior leadership team of Amnesty International are leaving the leading human rights organisation after an independent review said it had a “toxic” workplace, the British media reported on Tuesday.

London-based Amnesty’s Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo ordered an independent review after two employees killed themselves last year, according to The Times newspaper and the BBC.

Five of the seven members of the senior leadership team at Amnesty’s international secretariat are leaving the organisation after a review by Naidoo, a South Africa-born human rights activist of Indian descent.

An independent review of the conditions at Amnesty offices found that it had a “toxic work culture” and was in “a state of emergency”, The Times reported.

An Amnesty International spokeswoman told the BBC, “The former Senior Leadership Team, which comprised of seven directors, has been dissolved and a new transitional team is in place until all of the positions in the new four-person Coalition Leadership Team are filled.”

“This is expected to be completed by the end of 2019,” the spokeswoman said.

In May 2018, Gaetan Mootoo, 65, killed himself in Amnestys Paris offices. He left a note talking of stress and overwork. A subsequent inquiry found he was unhappy over a “justified sense of having been abandoned and neglected”.

Six weeks later, Rosalind McGregor, 28, a British intern working at Amnesty’s Geneva office, killed herself at her family home in Surrey, UK. While an inquiry into her death noted “personal reasons” as being involved, her family said they felt Amnesty could have done more to address her mental health.

Five of the seven senior leaders, based mainly in London and Geneva, are now believed to have left or are in the process of leaving the organisation, the BBC report said.

Around 475 members of staff were surveyed for the independent review, which was published in February. Many gave specific examples of experiencing or witnessing bullying by managers, the report said.

Amnesty is not the only human rights organisation to come under fire for its treatment of employees. A report earlier this year said that bullying and harassment were commonplace at Oxfam, and last year Save the Children was at the center of serious allegations of workplace sexual harassment, the BBC report said.