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	Three Aid Workers killed in Afghan Attack by Abdul Waheed Wafa UN News / New York Times Afghanistan   Kabul. August 13, 2008 (NYT)   Three women working for the International Rescue Committee, an aid organization that has been assisting Afghan refugees since the mid-1980s and one of their Afghan drivers were shot and killed on Wednesday in Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan.   They were reportedly traveling toward Kabul, local officials and the aid group said. Another Afghan driver was also critically wounded.   The provincial governor, Abdullah Wardak, said the aid workers “were killed as they were under fire by unknown gunmen.”   The International Rescue Committee said in a statement posted on its Web site that it had suspended its aid programs in Afghanistan indefinitely.   Mr. Wardak said the aid workers were driving toward Kabul when gunmen approached in a car and fired at them, forcing them off the road and into a ditch. The gunmen stopped their car, got out and shot the aid workers again, the governor said. The aid group said the victims’ vehicle was clearly marked as an International Rescue Committee vehicle.   * The Universal Rights Network unequivocally condemns attacks on humanitarian aid workers anywhere in the world by any parties. It is in violation of international humanitarian law and an act against humanity. Humanitarian aid workers are impartial, apolitical and acting only to try to relieve the suffering of ordinary people. They are most certainly Not parties to the conflict, and should never ever be targeted in such a manner.   13 August 2008   United Nations condemns attack on aid workers.   The top United Nations official in Afghanistan has voiced his outrage at the deaths of three female international aid workers and their Afghan colleague after their vehicle was attacked.   The vehicle, belonging to the International Rescue Committee, was travelling from Kabul to Logar when it was fired on by unknown gunmen this morning.   “I condemn this cowardly attack in the strongest possible terms and urge the authorities to leave no stone unturned in the search for the perpetrators,” Kai Eide, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, said in a statement.   “The IRC provides life saving humanitarian assistance to those most affected by the conflict and it is reprehensible that such selfless individuals working for the most vulnerable communities should be deliberately targeted in this way,” he added.   Mr. Eide urged all parties to recognise and respect the neutrality and independence of the humanitarian assistance being provided to the Afghan people.   The UN’s humanitarian chief also deplored the “brutal murder” of the aid workers. “Nothing can justify such an attack on people whose lives are devoted to helping the people of Afghanistan,” said John Holmes, who serves as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.   Today’s incident was the latest and most deadly single attack against the Afghan aid community this year, Mr. Holmes said. Already 19 aid workers have been killed in 2008, surpassing the total number of lives lost in 2007. “I appeal to all concerned to respect these principles and to respect the lives of those who are dedicated to helping others in need, irrespective of politics or religion,” he stated.   UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres expressed his shock and sadness over the killing. He noted that the IRC has been a longstanding partner of his agency in assisting Afghan refugees and internally displaced people, providing “neutral, impartial humanitarian aid to Afghans throughout all the long years of conflict – both in exile and inside Afghanistan.”
	USA: End Beating of Children in Public Schools by Human Rights Watch/American Civil Liberties Union USA   Aug 2008   More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.   In the 125-page report, “A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools,” the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of “paddling,” during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.   “Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn’t stop bad behaviour,” said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. “Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehaviour and at times even provokes it.”   The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.   “Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success,” said Farmer. “By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more.”   Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 per cent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 per cent of the student population.   “A Violent Education” is based on four weeks of on-the-ground research in Mississippi and Texas in late 2007 and early 2008, including more than 175 interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators, superintendents, and school board members.   The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.   In the report, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU cite experts on best practices in school discipline, who emphasize traditional approaches such as detention, and modern approaches such as positive behavior support systems. Positive behaviour support systems, which are school-wide discipline systems that stress a clear structure of rewards and consequences for student behavior, have been effectively implemented in major US school systems. States and school boards that fail to implement best practices allow the status quo, or school beatings, to remain in place.   Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call upon the US government to prohibit corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment in their schools.   Selected Witness Accounts:   “He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire under my butt.” – Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.   “The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them… When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it.” – Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.   “What made me so angry: he’s three years old, he was petrified. He didn’t want to go back to school, and he didn’t want to start his new school. I was so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to school with being paddled.” – Rose T., mother of a three-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.   “I went into the principal’s office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. … It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost welt-like markings. It didn’t last for more than a couple days. … It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That’s weird… even at that age I knew it was inappropriate.” – Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being late to class multiple times.   “I’ve heard this said at my school and at other schools: ‘This child should get less whips, it’ll leave marks.’ Students that are dark-skinned, it takes more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment.” – Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.   “I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something… we’re focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don’t respect them. They leave that principal’s office and they think, ‘they don’t consider me a human being.’ That young person loses self-respect.” – Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.   * Visit the link below to access the report. Visit the related web page
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