Both James and Maria Becket were involved, in various capacities, in campaigns and reporting on unrest, human rights violations, and revolutionary movements in many countries.

The Beckets had spent some time living in Chile in the early 1960s while James Becket was there as a Fulbright Scholar. James Becket was particularly involved in reporting on Chile and the Allende government and made the film ¡Que Hacer! in 1972, based on his own unpublished novel.

In the early 1970s, he researched and wrote a thesis on the nationalisation of foreign enterprise in developing countries as a graduate student at the University of Geneva.

In 1972, James Becket began working as Chief Information Officer for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. He also worked for Amnesty International in their campaign to end torture and wrote their report on global torture in 1973.

Many of the international movements were associated with the Centre D'Information sur les Mouvements de Liberation in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Beckets lived from 1964 to 1983.