Lucy Lamble talks to an Amnesty International expert about the importance of letting people in tough situations tell their own stories

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The old way of appealing for help during a human rights crisis, simply by telling people all that is wrong in the world, risks making the public fearful and hopeless, says Thomas Coombes, Amnesty International’s deputy director of communications. The solution, he says, is to offer hope, even in the darkest times imaginable. Asking people fleeing war and persecution to tell their own stories is the best way to forge a direct emotional connection and reach out to people watching an appeal