VIDEO BLOG: Marla B in Jordan, Day 1
CIVIC’s associate director Marla Bertagnolli talks briefly from Jordan about the stories of Iraqi war victims who have fled to the country as refugees.
On to Paris…
Posted By: Erica On June 12, the French government will host 60 major donors, foreign governments and non-governmental actors, at the Paris Donor Conference for Afghanistan. The Afghan government will be asking the international community to commit to $50 billion in aid for the coming years. We at CIVIC wanted to make sure that at…
GUEST BLOG: At the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions
Posted By: Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst, HRW and CIVIC Board Member Here I am in Dublin at the massive Croke Park Stadium, with nearly one thousand diplomats and campaigners to write the text of a treaty banning cluster munitions. I never would have thought this event was possible just three or four years ago,…
Indiscriminate use of force
Posted By: Erica On March 4, 2007, a US Marine convoy killed 19 Afghan civilians and wounded 50 others in one of the worst incidents of indiscriminate fire on Afghan civilians. Fleeing the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Jalalabad city, the Marines fired arbitrarily at passing civilians on the crowded highway, including those…
UN Special Rapporteur speaks out
Posted By: Erica For the past two weeks the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary executions has been in Afghanistan on a fact-finding mission (See here for a Special Rapporteur definition). His mandate is to look into all violations of the “right to life” in Afghanistan, and provide recommendations for improving respect…
A sad story…
Posted By: Erica Today [May 18, 2008] I received the following, very sad story in an email from one of the co-workers at my Afghan NGO: Today at noontime one of the women who works with our Helmand treatment center as a social worker popped in with a few questions. At the polite – to…
Aiding Garmsir’s refugees
Posted By: Erica Since the end of April, hundreds of Afghan families have fled the Garmsir region of Helmand province due to fighting between insurgents and US-led forces. High estimates by the Afghan Red Crescent Society and by the UN agency for refugees in Afghanistan have suggested that as many as 1000 families have fled.…
Tora Bora, Part 2
Posted By: Erica When I met Nazir and Amin they were doing much better – they had received assistance from ACAP (the US funded program that supports war victims) that allowed them to run their own family grocery businesses. Although they were satisfied with the assistance and their current situation, I could not help worrying…
GUEST BLOG: Waking up in Afghanistan
Posted By: Ana, working on human rights issues in Afghanistan Just as any other morning my driver was waiting for me outside. I got into the car hoping that my coffee-mug will ease the misery of an early Saturday morning pick-up. Our usual greeting routine was full of how are you and how was your…