• Afghan women protest against street harassment in Kabul July 14, 2011.
    © 2011 Reuters
    Afghanistan: Little Progress on Rights
    The dire human rights situation in Afghanistan showed few signs of progress in the past year, raising serious concerns about the future.
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  • Human Rights in Afghanistan
    Ten years after Taliban rule, Afghanistan’s rights situation remains extremely poor. Armed groups routinely engage in extortion and violence against communities, while the Taliban continues to conduct attacks that indiscriminately or intentionally harm civilians. The situation for women’s rights is particularly bad, with threats and attacks by insurgents on women leaders, schoolgirls, and girls’ schools, and police arrests of women for “moral crimes” such as running away from forced marriage or domestic violence. Plans by the international community to decrease aid in coming years raise the risk that a bad human rights situation could become worse.

Reports

Afghanistan

  • Afghanistan: Little Progress on Rights
    Jan 23, 2012
    The dire human rights situation in Afghanistan showed few signs of progress in the past year, raising serious concerns about the future.
  • Afghanistan: Appoint Experts to Human Rights Commission
    Jan 18, 2012

    President Hamid Karzai should appoint independent and experienced human rights experts to fill vacancies on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

  • Afghanistan: Decree Increases Detainees’ Risk of Torture
    Jan 10, 2012
    President Hamid Karzai should revoke a new decree that puts detainees in Afghan-run prisons at heightened risk of torture and ill-treatment.
  • Last Chance to Get it Right in Afghanistan
    Dec 29, 2011
    Ten years ago last week, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as the leader of Afghanistan. “In this critical time, when our motherland is watching our actions, let us come together and be brothers and sisters,” he said, taking office as head of the interim government after the Taliban’s defeat. “Let us be good to each other and be compassionate and share our grief. Let us forget the sad past.” His words captured the hope of many Afghans that their country was emerging from conflict to a new era of reconstruction, democracy, and respect for human rights.
  • Afghanistan: Don’t Expand Afghan Local Police
    Dec 15, 2011

    President Barack Obama should halt plans by the US military to expand the Afghan Local Police program until significant reforms are made in training, supervision, and accountability.

  • Afghanistan: A Decade of Missed Opportunities
    Dec 4, 2011
    The Afghan government and its allies abroad have failed to make human rights a top priority in the decade since the fall of the Taliban government, leaving Afghans to face an uncertain future.
  • Afghanistan: Key Conference Sidelining Women
    Oct 30, 2011
    Afghan women activists are at risk of being sidelined at a key international conference on Afghanistan’s future scheduled for December 5, 2011, in Germany.
  • Human rights and the Afghan security transition
    Sep 26, 2011

    As the deadline approaches for the transition to Afghan control of security in 2014, the Afghan government and its international backers have embraced a high-risk strategy of funding and arming militias in the country's north (a process that was started by the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), in 2009), as well as a village-level force called the "Afghan Local Police" (ALP). But they have done so without providing the necessary oversight mechanisms, thereby creating instability in the very communities these forces are supposed to protect.

  • Afghanistan Ratifies Global Ban on Cluster Bombs
    Sep 13, 2011

    Afghanistan should be commended for its ratification of the international convention banning cluster bombs in defiance of pressure from the United States.

  • Afghanistan: Rein in Abusive Militias and Afghan Local Police
    Sep 12, 2011
    Militias and some units of the new US-backed Afghan Local Police are committing serious human rights abuses, but the government is not providing proper oversight or holding them accountable.
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