GAZA – I trekked across the Sinai Peninsula after watching the fighting from the Armistice line for a few weeks in December and January. Israel wouldn’t let human rights monitors into Gaza, so I decided to take my team of researchers in through Egypt once the fighting stopped. I’ve been to Gaza twice before –…
KABUL, Afghanistan – I’ve written generally in the last few blogs about the compensation and victim assistance issues that CIVIC analyzed in our recent report. Let’s take a concrete example of the type of harm and redress we’re talking about. A few months ago, I met several families who lost relatives and friends in a…
KABUL, Afghanistan – I arrived back in Kabul this week. With the snow already melting, many fear that spring – and with it a spring offensive by the Taliban – is already on its way. If past years are any guide, those bearing the lasting costs of an escalation in the conflict will be the…
KABUL, Afghanistan – For the last year, I have been living in Afghanistan interviewing civilians harmed in the conflict for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). We spoke with 143 survivors of airstrikes, suicide bombings, IEDs, convoy shootings, and other incidents of war. What they told me, as well as what more than…
Posted by: Erica KABUL – I was in Pakistan recently, looking at the situation of victims of conflict on the other side of the border. In the past few months, the number of US Predator strikes into the tribal areas of Pakistan from across the border in Afghanistan have skyrocketed. (See this Washington Post article).…
Continued from below Posted by: Erica KABUL – In many ways, the experience of these two leaders in Wardak is representative of many Afghans’ attempts to get an apology, explanation, or other just resolution of their claims. In many cases, civilians do not have a sense that they could make a demand for compensation. Among…
Continued from below Posted by: Erica KABUL – As far as the two elders from Wardak understood, they had duly filed their claim, and they fully expected that the international military authorities who had caused the damage to their land would deal with them justly. The advice I had to give them was the last…
Posted by: Erica KABUL – Last week I was meeting with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) at their offices, when two community elders from Wardak province walked in. Wardak province is adjacent to the province in which Kabul is located, but the fighting there has been so intense that few human rights organizations…
Posted By: Rebecca W., Erica in Afghanistan Many of the CIVIC blog entries discussing assistance that has been provided to civilians in Afghanistan credit the Afghan Civilian Assistance Program (ACAP) for helping individuals. While ACAP is one of the best functioning civilian-assistance programs in Afghanistan, some of the civilians and NGO workers that I have…