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Roosevelt, asked the AI secretariat to arrange for a meeting in December 1974 at the secretariat of all London-based voluntary organizations.
Amnesty International has itself attended various meetings of other NGOs. These included the Second World Conference on Religion and Peace (1974) held in Louvain, Belgium; the 10th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (1975) in Algiers, as well as the International Seminar of Lawyers on Vietnam (1975) held in Paris by the same organization; the Enlarged Meeting of the Steering Committee of the Continuing Liaison Council of the World Congress of Peace Forces (1974) in Moscow; the 24th General Assembly of the International Press Institute (1975) in Zurich, Switzerland; the 1975 Conference of the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace in Canterbury, England; and the 12th Congress of the Union of Arab Lawyers (1974) in Baghdad.
In addition, Secretary General Martin Ennals was a principal participant in the World Council of Churches Consultation on Human Rights and Christian Respon- sibility held 21 -26 October 1974 in St Pölten, Austria. Especially close coopera- tion continues to exist with the International Commission of Jurists, particularly with respect to the planning and execution of certain missions.
As a member of Sub-Committee on Racism and Decolonization of the Special NGO Committee on Human Rights (Geneva), AI was involved in convening the major International NGO Conference against Apartheid and Colonialism in Africa, held 2-5 September 1974 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. AI was represented at the conference by Clara Olsen, former researcher on southern Africa and now member of the staff of the UN Commissioner for Namibia (Sean MacBride), and by Freydoun Kadjar of the Swiss Section.
Special mention should be made of the second session of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitari- an Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts which was convened in Geneva, February- April 1975, by the Swiss Government in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross. In addition to continuing its work at the conference through the Non-Governmental Organization Working Group on Humanitarian Law, AI representative Henry Jacoby, who was an observer at the conference, delivered on 2 April 1975 a formal statement by Amnesty International, drawing the attention of the assembled governments in the conference's first committee to the recommendations made to the conference in the AI report of its mission to investigate conflicting allegations of torture in the Middle East. Of particular importance was the recommendation that the conference make provision for an automatic system of independent international investigation into allegations of infringements of the Geneva Convention from any source. This matter will be taken up again by the conference when it reconvenes next year.