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  • Human Rights in Afghanistan
    Many Afghans feel enormous anxiety as the 2014 deadline for withdrawing international combat forces from Afghanistan looms and warlords and other powerbrokers jockey for position. The powerful, when implicated in serious abuses, are almost never held to account, and the justice system fails ordinary Afghans. Torture is rampant in detention facilities. The Afghan government’s failure to tackle discrimination and respond effectively to violence against women undermines the already perilous state of women’s rights. Civilian deaths in 2012 from the armed conflict with the Taliban numbered several thousand.
  • Women's rights activists march to support a female Afghan lawmaker during a demonstration in Kabul October 13, 2011.
    © 2011 Reuters
    Afghanistan: Defend Women’s Rights
    The Afghan government should adopt strong measures to protect women’s rights in advance of the deadline at the end of 2014 for withdrawal of international combat forces, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 10, 2013, Afghanistan will for the first time appear before the United Nations committee that will review its compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
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Afghanistan

  • Afghanistan: Defend Women’s Rights
    Jun 28, 2013
    The Afghan government should adopt strong measures to protect women’s rights in advance of the deadline at the end of 2014 for withdrawal of international combat forces, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 10, 2013, Afghanistan will for the first time appear before the United Nations committee that will review its compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
  • Indonesia: Children Seeking Refuge Find Abuse, Neglect
    Jun 24, 2013
    Indonesia detains and neglects migrant and asylum-seeking children. Each year, hundreds are detained in sordid conditions, without access to lawyers, and sometimes beaten. Others are left to fend for themselves, without any assistance with food or shelter.
  • Way to Stem Tide of Human Misery is Help Indonesia
    Jun 24, 2013
    Arif was only 15 when he fled Afghanistan, without his parents, and paid smugglers to take him to Indonesia. There, he was detained for months in sordid, overcrowded immigration detention facilities where the guards beat him. When he got out, he felt he had no options in Indonesia, so he risked the boat journey to Australia.
  • Afghanistan: Weak Appointments Undermine Rights Body
    Jun 18, 2013
    Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s appointment of a weakly qualified human rights commission with little public consultation raises concerns about the country’s most important rights body.
  • US: Sergeant Bales and the Myth of Military Justice
    Jun 7, 2013
    US Army Sgt. Robert Bales pled guilty this week to murder for a gruesome set of attacks in Afghanistan in 2012 in which he walked off his Kandahar base in the middle of the night and shot 16 Afghan civilians, including 9 children. Sadly—amazingly—reports of killings of “nine children” by US forces are not unique. In Kunar province in 2011, nine children aged 8 to 14 were gunned down by US helicopters while out collecting firewood, reportedly due to a “miscommunication.” (The US commander at the time, Gen. David Petraeus, apologized for the killings.) This followed a similar incident in the same province, in late 2009, when nine children were killed in a night raid, with Afghan government officials alleging that some had been executed. No one in either incident was ever brought to justice.
  • 'Dark future' for women's rights in Afghanistan
    May 22, 2013
    In January 2012, my investigations determined that some 400 women and girls were locked away in Afghan prisons and juvenile detention facilities for the 'moral crime' of running away from home or having sex outside of marriage.
  • Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’
    May 21, 2013
    The Afghan government should take urgent steps to halt an alarming increase in women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes."
  • The Real Costs of CIA Cash
    May 21, 2013
    When the New York Times reported recently that the CIA routinely provides cash payments to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, many were surprised. I wasn't among them. The Karzai scandal cycle has developed a certain amount of redundancy: his odd outbursts, his family's endless corruption, the vacillating positions on peace negotiations and about faces on the Taliban one day and the United States the next--it has lost the power to shock. CIA payments are not even at the front of this parade of infamies.
  • A Real Life 'Hunger Games'
    May 20, 2013
    Here’s a story to break your heart – thousands of Afghan refugee boys who roam Europe alone, without parents, without enough help from European governments, and at risk of destitution, detention, and death.
  • Afghanistan: Peaceful Protest Suppressed
    May 7, 2013
    Afghan authorities should investigate the arrests and possible torture of peaceful protesters by security forces in Kabul.
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