Salil Shetty

Following this, Shetty joined ActionAid, one of the world's most respected international development NGOs, rising up to head ActionAid's operations in India and later Kenya in East Africa. Shetty was the first person from the global south to be appointed as the Chief Executive of ActionAid, 1998- 2003. Salil Shetty is credited with not just transforming ActionAid into a Southern-led International organisation, moving its global headquarters from London to Johannesburg in South Africa, but set off an important new trend in global development organisations to become more participatory and bottom up in their approach.[8] The most recent major global organisation to move in this direction is Oxfam which has moved its headquarters to Nairobi, with an African woman CEO.[9]

The move initiated by Salil Shetty enable ActionAid to work towards giving all its different country programmes a more equal say in how the organisation works. The new structure made ActionAid's commitment to accountability to the people, communities and countries it worked with a reality, and therefore making it more effective in fighting and eradicating poverty.[10] In line with Shetty's commitment to making ActionAid a truly international organisation, during his tenure as Chief Executive regional programmes and policy advocacy offices were established in Bangkok,[11] Harare,[12] Brussels[13] and Washington DC.

Given his significant achievements at ActionAid, Shetty was then appointed the Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign from 2003 till 2010.[14] The UN Millennium Campaign was established by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2002. The Campaign supported citizens' efforts to hold their governments to account for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's). Under Salil Shetty's leadership the campaign for the MDGs reached over a hundred countries across the globe and the MDGs gained a great deal of traction among decision makers and citizens alike.

In 2005, citizens groups, including NGOs, faith groups, trade unions, supported by the Millennium Campaign, mobilised for the MDGS/‘Make Poverty History’ campaign to increase awareness and pressuring governments into taking actions towards relieving absolute poverty. The campaign focused on the responsibility of developed countries, especially the G8 and European Union. The three focus areas for change were trade, debt and aid. Mass mobilisations were seen in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway and other developed countries.[15]

The UN Millennium Campaign, under the leadership of Salil Shetty, also helped aggregate the various national campaigns into The Global Call to Action Against Poverty GCAP). GCAP is an alliance that brings together trade unions, international non-governmental organisations, the women's and youth movements, community and faith groups and others to call for action from world leaders in the global North and South to meet their promises to end poverty and inequality. GCAP added to existing campaigning on poverty by forming diverse, inclusive national platforms that are able to open up civil society space and advocate more effectively than individual organisations would be able to do on their own. It also organised global mass mobilisations that expressed solidarity between the global North and South, allowed tens of millions of ordinary people to make their voices heard.[16] GCAP has coalitions present in over a hundred countries, a few of which are listed below

• • 2005- plus d'excess France[17]
  • Hottokenai, Sekai no Mazushisa - Japan[18]
  • Make Poverty History - Australia[19]
  • Make Poverty History - Canada[20]
  • Make Poverty History - Ireland[21]
  • Make Poverty History - United Kingdom[22]
  • The ONE Campaign - Singapore[23]
  • The ONE Campaign - USA[24]
  • EEN - Armoede de Wereld uit - The Netherlands[25]
  • Wada Na Todo Abhiyan - India[26]

An innovative mass action launched by the UN Millennium Campaign was the Stand Up initiative. On 16 October 2006, millions of people around the world joined together to 'Stand Up against Poverty' – an effort to remind governments that they must keep their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and eradicate extreme poverty. Stand Up against Poverty, is also officially recognized in the Guinness World Record for the "greatest number of people to stand up for a given cause, at multiple locations, within 24 hours." Stand Up campaigns were held around the world by people of all ages, races and religions.[27] Since 2006, the UN Millennium Campaign organized record breaking Stand Up events annually around the world, to campaign for the MDGs. The number of participants reached 173 million in 2009. During the 2009 event, Salil Shetty explained the motivation behind the events saying "With just six years left until the deadline by which heads of state have pledged to eradicate extreme poverty and its root causes, 'Stand Up' will be a stark reminder that citizens will not accept excuses for governments breaking promises to the world's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. This year's mobilization will place particular emphasis on telling world leaders that their track record on women's rights, maternal mortality and hunger is unacceptable. Citizens refuse to accept the fact that 70 percent of the people living in poverty are women and children and 500,000 women continue to die annually in the process of giving life, and they are demanding urgent action from their leaders."[28]

As Secretary General, Salil Shetty led a major change process to transform Amnesty International from being a predominantly European organisation to a truly global people's movement for human rights. Amnesty International, an organisation with staff primarily from citizens of Europe and North America, and ground presence almost exclusively in the richest countries of the world, was systematically reformed into becoming an organisation based in and led by people from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East i.e. the global South.

This Global Transition Programme (GTP) to move Amnesty "closer to the ground"[44] represented a significant organizational change for Amnesty: it set up Regional Offices across the globe in 11 locations, hired the vast majority of its staff and leaders from the global south. The change process also focused on strengthening the integration across segments and functions within the organization and strengthening Amnesty's national chapters/sections, particularly in the South. Amnesty also aimed to increase its supporters and activists in the global South, while diversifying its institutional sources of funding. This has resulted in the organisation becoming quicker in taking action, more sensitive to local realities, and be more present in media in the global south and east as well as on social media. The change process was aimed to lead to "Amnesty having significantly greater impact by becoming a more global movement" and to result in "acting with greater legitimacy, speed, capacity and relevance as we stand alongside those whose rights are violated".[44] New national offices were set up in India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa and Kenya in 2012. The human rights work done on these countries, which was done by researchers and campaigners out of London, would now be done from inside the countries themselves.[45]

The Global Transition programme was mentioned in Samuel Moyn's 2017 book, Human Rights and the Uses of History. He noted that "For human rights to make more of a difference, the movement has to be more honest about the fact that its success depends on its own mobilizational strength and grassroots penetration. For this reason, Amnesty International’s recent decision to return to its mobilizational roots and cultivate local centers of authority is a promising step in the right direction. But few other NGOs work in this way."[46]

An independent study conducted by the Transnational NGO Initiative housed at Syracuse University on the Global Transition programme observed that Amnesty's visibility in national and regionally salient media and localities and languages was enhanced. Its credibility among the general public and other broad stakeholders globally was generally thought to have improved as a result of the GTP. GTP also contributed to Amnesty's supportership growth strategy through the increase of supporters in a few selected countries such as India.[47]

The decentralisation of Amnesty International's international secretariat, led by Shetty, has caused a serious dispute amongst the organisation's staff. According to an article published by the Guardian on 2 December 2012,

The British newspaper The Observer, where Amnesty International's founder launched the organization in 1961, characterized the situation caused by Shetty's sacking of staff working on core issues such as women's rights and the death penalty: "Amnesty was one of 20th-century Britain's greatest gifts to the world. Now it is a wreck."[48]

the core of the dispute lies in the decision, led by the secretary general, Salil Shetty, to take the organisation "closer to the ground", opening 10 new regional "hubs" in hotspots where human rights violations occur. Some of Amnesty's 500 staff in London will be moved abroad, and those affected argue that the shift is under-planned, ill-judged and risks muddying the purpose of the organisation. For them this is not an industrial dispute over job cuts, but a battle for the organisation's soul.[49]