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	Civilian Safety top Afghan priority, warn humanitarian agencies by Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission   Mar 2011   Afghanistan: untenable situation for civilians. (ICRC).   The first two months of 2011 have seen a dramatic deterioration in the security situation for ordinary Afghans.   Armed opposition suicide bombings in public places where civilians congregate, roads sown with improvised explosive devices and civilian casualties as a result of operations carried out by international military forces that have gone wrong, have all added to the sufferings of people who want nothing more than to be able to go about their daily lives in safety.   "People tell us that they are caught in the middle of the conflict and they don’t know which way to turn," explained the ICRC''s head of delegation, Reto Stocker. "It is an untenable situation. Civilians must be protected from harm as much as possible, not become victims of the fighting."   The worsening security also means that people''s access to health-care services in remote areas is becoming ever more compromised. In government-run Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, which is supported by the ICRC, the number of deliveries per month has risen sharply. Although many factors are involved in this phenomenon, one of them is almost certainly the dangerous conditions on the ground in areas where conflict is ongoing. In some places local health clinics are closed, doctors and nurses have fled, and village roads are blocked by checkpoints or fighting. Women about to give birth are therefore having to make the long journey to Kandahar if they need medical help.   Spring is also the time of year when measles epidemics reach a peak. It is essential, therefore, that countrywide vaccination campaigns be allowed to go ahead without hindrance.   One of the ICRC’s major preoccupations over the past two months has been how to remain fully operational despite the poor security conditions. "We need to remain close to the people if we are going to be able to do our work," said Mr Stocker. "So we are having to adapt our approach – this means working more and more through our local partners in the Afghan Red Crescent Society, and others who are living in the remote areas that we cannot physically reach. We are also talking to the armed opposition, to the international military forces, and to all others involved in the conflict, as we always do."   Dec 2010   Humanitarian situation in Afghanistan likely to worsen in 2011 say aid agencies.(IRIN)   The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.   “We are growing increasingly concerned about the conflict, which is into its ninth year. It’s spreading and intensifying and we’re likely to see another year of conflict with dramatic consequences for civilians,” Reto Stocker, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Afghanistan, said on 15 December.   Civilian deaths and injuries resulting from the conflict have continued to rise over the past two years and civilian communities have been forced to take sides in the war, the organization said.   “Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, serving around four million people, has admitted over 2,650 weapon-related patients so far in 2010, compared with just over 2,110 in 2009,” the ICRC said.   In the first six months of 2010, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 3,268 civilian casualties (1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries) - up 31 percent on the same period a year ago.   With more than 1,750 staff in 15 local offices, Afghanistan is the ICRC’s largest operation worldwide, with a budget of US$89 million to assist conflict-affected people in 2011.   In a humanitarian appeal launched on 5 December, 51 international and local aid agencies requested $678 million to assist the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan in 2011 through 134 projects.   The appeal expects the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to increase from 320,000 in 2010 to 440,000 in 2011.   “The toll of ongoing conflict and endemic natural disasters on Afghanistan’s people remains immense, requiring continued life-saving assistance,” Catherine Bragg, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters at the launch of the appeal.   However, money alone is not enough for aid agencies to save lives in Afghanistan. Access to people in insecure areas and immunity from attacks and intimidation are other key requirements.   More than half the country, including some of the worst conflict-affected areas, is inaccessible to UN agencies and other international aid organizations.   While deliberate armed attacks on humanitarian workers not perceived as aligned to military and political actors have shrunk steadily over the past year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, the ICRC is increasingly concerned about the proliferation of armed actors, which often inhibit humanitarian work and pose serious risks to civilians.   “I think the critical test will be in spring 2011,” Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of The Taliban, told IRIN. “If we are going to see a resurgence in the Taliban violence in 2011 as we saw in 2010, then I think the whole situation will become very, very serious.”   Matt Waldman, an independent Afghanistan analyst, said more civilian Afghans would be caught up in the intensified conflict next year. “All the evidence suggests that NATO''''''''s military escalation is more than matched by the Taliban,” he said, adding that conditions could only improve if there is political reform and a multi-layered peace process with the Taliban, which should be backed by the US. “Neither can happen too soon,” Waldman said.   Nov. 2010   Civilian Safety top Afghan priority, warn humanitarian agencies.   International military forces must take urgent steps to protect civilians caught up in the escalating conflict as they plan for the handover of responsibility for security to the Afghan government, warned leading aid agencies.   The call comes as NATO leaders gather for a major summit in Lisbon to discuss the transition plan drawn up by US General Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan.   Twenty nine international and national aid agencies including Oxfam, Afghanaid and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, have released a new report - Nowhere to Turn - which urges NATO to do more to improve the training and monitoring of Afghan national security forces during the transition period.   Ashley Jackson, head of policy for Oxfam in Afghanistan, said: "Transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces faces enormous obstacles. There is a grave risk of widespread abuses by the national security forces, which can range from theft and extortion to torture and indiscriminate killing of civilians. NATO member states, who train, advise, fund, and arm those forces, share responsibility for making sure this does not happen, but so far we have seen little action on the ground."   The report notes that Afghan soldiers and police are poorly trained and command systems are weak. It says that there are no effective mechanisms for registering community complaints and that civilian deaths caused by Afghan forces are not adequately investigated or tracked. The report calls on NATO to rectify this as a key part of its transition strategy.   Nader Nadery, Commissioner for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: "Recent revelations of abuses by Iraqi security forces and militia - and the fact that we are already seeing abusive behaviour by militias in Afghanistan - should be sounding a warning bell. There is still time to get the right controls in place in Afghanistan. But NATO must act now."   The agencies argue NATO should abandon dangerous schemes such as the so-called "community defense initiatives", which involve supporting local militia groups to fight the Taliban.   They say that the international forces must immediately stop arming these community militias. Recruits are barely vetted, receive little training and are often accountable only to the local commanders. Far from helping to stabilise the country, they are likely to contribute to the growing instability.   2010 is already the deadliest year for Afghan civilians since 2001, with civilian casualties up 31 percent in the first six months alone. Security is rapidly deteriorating across the country with even the previously stable north reporting a 136 percent rise in civilian deaths.   Anti-government groups cause most Afghan civilian casualties. However, the report warns that while NATO forces have taken steps to reduce the direct harm their operations cause to civilians, their military tactics are continuing to put Afghan lives at risk. A key factor behind NATO"s reduction in direct civilian casualties is the decrease in the use of airstrikes since 2009. However, the agencies warn that there is a risk that such casualties may now increase as there has been a dramatic rise in airstrikes in recent months.   "More civilians are being killed and injured than ever before and Afghanistan is more insecure than at any time in the past nine years. We are concerned that unless urgent steps are taken now, the violence will continue to escalate in 2011 and civilian suffering will only increase," said Farhana Faruqi-Stocker of Afghanaid.   * Access the report via the link below. Visit the related web page
	A Message from the LRA"s Victims by MSF / Human Rights Watch & agencies   Nov. 2010   Sudan"s girls enslaved by armed cult, by Jason Koutsoukis.   Zaha Mary was freed by Ugandan troops last week 12 months after being abducted by Africa"s most feared militia, the Lord"s Resistance Army. Mary was found in an isolated LRA encampment in the Central African Republic and later flown to a Ugandan army base near her home in southern Sudan. Not even Mary"s parents knew their 10-year-old daughter was alive.   Ugandan Defence Force officer Lieutenant-Colonel John Damulira told reporters that Mary"s freedom came after a gun battle with the LRA. "This girl was injured slightly but we were able to rescue her," he said.   The LRA snatched Mary last December as she was walking alone along a road near Yei to visit her aunt. She was forced to march more than 800 kilometres to Obo in the Central African Republic and handed over as a gift to a senior LRA warlord.   The LRA, a messianic Christian cult founded in Uganda in the 1980s, has terrorised villagers in southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic since being pushed out of Uganda in 2005.   Notorious for the savagery of its attacks against innocent villagers in its search for food and valuables, the LRA also has a history of forcing children as young as Mary into sexual servitude. "We are rescuing women like Mary every week as part of our operations against the LRA," Colonel Damulira said. "Last week we rescued 13 girls like her."   Working closely with the government of southern Sudan in an effort to rout the LRA, Colonel Damulira believes the core of the LRA and its leader, Joseph Kony, are most likely hiding in Darfur, in western Sudan.   "They have nowhere to go from here," he said. "Incursions into southern Sudan, Congo and Uganda are getting less. Rates of child abduction, looting and murder at the hands of the LRA are also slowly dropping. This is a very brutal group of men. Defeating them will not be easy."   I visited a makeshift camp near Yambio, in southern Sudan, established by men and women who have lost their spouses in LRA attacks. One woman, who did not want her name published, said her village was decimated by the LRA this month.   "My husband was tied to stakes in the ground and beaten to death in front of me," she said. "I managed to flee with my three-year-old son but my two daughters [aged seven and eight] were abducted. I have no way of knowing where they are, and whether they are alive or dead."   Another Sudanese woman living in the same camp for LRA victims is Juliana Bingo, 23, who was freed by Ugandan troops in January. She was abducted from her village of James Diko, near Yambio, when she was 17.   "It is a very brutal way of living," she said. "When you break the rules, you are beaten. Your role is to serve the men, to make sure that everything they tell you to do is done very quickly. Because they are always on the run, you never really know where you will be sleeping the next day, the next week. I still live in fear of the LRA."   *Jason Koutsoukis travelled to South Sudan courtesy of Medecins Sans Frontieres.   Nov. 2010   During its recent investigation of the Lord"s Resistance Army"s (LRA) crimes, Human Rights Watch researchers noticed hundreds of people in the Central African Republic wearing t-shirts bearing Barack Obama"s image. For them, and for LRA victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Obama is a hero. Many even had personal messages for him.   In May, Obama signed into law legislation requiring the US to develop a strategy to protect civilians from the LRA and to stop the rebel group"s violence. The new strategy is due by November 24.   Between May and September, our researchers spoke with hundreds of the rebel group"s victims, taking their testimony, and recording their messages to Obama and other world leaders.   The LRA has carried out horrific atrocities across central Africa. It reinforces its numbers by abducting children, who are then forced to fight and kill. Across northern Congo, southern Sudan, and CAR, the LRA has killed 2,385 people in the past two years and caused more than 400,000 to flee their villages and abandon their fields.   Even in the crush of politics at home, President Obama should respond to the cries of the LRA"s victims. His leadership is needed with other governments to protect civilians and arrest those responsible for the LRA"s war crimes. Visit the related web page
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