By JASON STRAZIUSO and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writers
KABUL – Afghanistan's leading human rights organization said Sunday it was investigating the possibility that white phosphorus was used in a U.S.-Taliban battle that killed scores of Afghans. The U.S. military rejected speculation it had used the weapon but left open the possibility Taliban militants did.
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(IRIN) - The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community involved in Afghanistan must recommit to the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice (APPRJ) - known as transitional justice - which is expected to address crimes committed in the past three decades in the war-torn country, said the UN high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour.
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HRW.org - One year after launching the Afghanistan Compact, President Hamid Karzai’s government and its international backers have largely failed to meet the compact’s benchmarks on improving human rights and basic security, Human Rights Watch said. Members of the international community and the Afghan government will meet in Berlin on January 30 and 31 to assess their implementation of the Afghanistan Compact.
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By Fisnik Abrashi, Associated Press
More than 1,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2006, most of them as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces in the country's unstable south, a rights group said Tuesday.
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By Matt Prodger, BBC News
Human Rights Watch has urged the United Nations to address the situation in Afghanistan where more than 3,000 people have died in fighting this year.
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By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press
An international human rights group criticized NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, saying their tactics increasingly endanger civilians and are turning the population against the Western alliance.
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By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press
Women are facing increasing violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, especially when they speak out publicly to defend women's rights, a senior U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council.
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AFP - The scandal over German soldiers desecrating the dead in Afghanistan grew as more photographs emerged of troops playing with skulls.
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By Emsie Ferreira, AFP
Chancellor Angela Merkel promised tough action after German soldiers in Afghanistan were photographed playing and posing with a human skull.
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By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press
Eight Pakistanis released from U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned home Monday, a Cabinet minister said.
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IRIN - A weak judiciary, a lack of law enforcement and widespread discriminatory practices against women are fuelling a rise in honour killings in Afghanistan, officials from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said on Friday.
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By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press
In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
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The Independent Online - No place has been more synonymous with oppression of women in recent history than Afghanistan under the Taliban, and nowhere was the abuse more brutal than in Kandahar, the birthplace of the country's Islamist zealotry.
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