The World Campaign for the Release of South African Political Prisoners was established in 1963 to mobilise international action on behalf of political prisoners in South Africa and in particular to campaign for the abandonment of the Rivonia trial. The AAM was on the committee along with representatives from the Africa Bureau, Christian Action, and the Movement for Colonial Freedom. In 1967 the group merged with a similar campaign launched by the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) and operated from the IDAF office.

The AAM established a political prisoners sub-committee which operated during the late 1960s and early 1970s and then in 1973 held a major conference called 'Southern Africa: the Imprisoned Society' to highlight the plight of those imprisoned for their political beliefs. The name of this conference, abbreviated to SATIS, was adopted by the sub-committee and became the focus of the AAM's political prisoner work for the next twenty years. A conference held in 1988 on 'Children, Apartheid, and Repression in Southern Africa' led to the formation of the SATIS Committee on Children.