Founded in London in 1961, Amnesty International is a Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with over one million members worldwide. Amnesty International is dedicated to global health issues (pollution and water/air quality, HIV/AIDS, and the standard of living), freeing prisoners of conscience, gaining fair trials for political prisoners, ending torture, political killings and "disappearances," and abolishing the death penalty throughout the world (taken from www.amnestyusa.org).