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	Afghan War Crime Amnesty long step away from securing basic rights for the Afghan people by Marte Gerhardsen CARE Norway & agencies   March 2010   Afghanistan"s new law giving amnesty to people accused of serious war crimes, including violence against women and children, is a long step away from securing basic rights for the Afghan people, warns CARE.   The promise to improve Afghan women"s lives was among the goals expressed after the fall of the Taliban. Reports from our colleagues in Afghanistan suggest this has not at all happened. Those few women who dare stand up and voice their opinions, are met with threats and violence. "This new law shows that the Afghan society is moving from bad to worse when it comes to women"s rights," says Marte Gerhardsen, national director of CARE Norway.   For decades, the Afghan people have suffered violence and abuse on the part of warlords. The new law makes it impossible to prosecute warlords and other perpetrators of war crimes committed before Taliban"s fall in 2001.   "Not prosecuting these crimes is an act of contempt towards the victims." Gerhardsen continues, "As a consequence people will have even less confidence in the government and the political processes in general."   Afghanistan also recently passed a law legalizing rape in marriage as well as reducing women"s right to education, employment and inheritance.   These new laws demonstrate the Afghan government"s disregard of securing equal treatment of women and men. "This happens in spite of the fact that the Afghan constitution clearly asserts that all citizens have equal rights under the law," says Gerhardsen.   The amnesty law directly contradicts U.N. Resolution 1325 on prosecuting war criminals and crimes against humanity, especially sexual violence and other types of violence against women and young girls. "It sends a signal to women in Afghanistan that their rights are not taken seriously," Gerhardsen states.   Many of the war criminals now given amnesty are government representatives today. Gerhardsen fears this will have adverse effects for those women struggling to secure higher positions in society.   He says, "Because of this law they will have to compete with men who have used aggression and violence to achieve their goals and gotten away with it. This sets development back several years in the Afghan society."   Norah Niland, the outgoing representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Afghanistan, called on the Afghan government to repeal a controversial law which gives blanket immunity to perpetrators of mass atrocities committed over the past three decades.   "This law greenlights [criminal] impunity," Niland told reporters in Kabul on 25 March, adding that the law inhibited effective implementation of a transitional justice plan in the country the deadline for which expired in March 2009.   The so-called National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and Stability Law, popularly known as the amnesty law, was ratified by two-thirds of the Afghan parliament in 2007 but has recently been exposed to public scrutiny.   Article 3 of the law grants unconditional immunity from prosecution to all belligerent parties and individuals involved in fighting between 1979 and 2002.   Niland said the country would not be able to shed its fractured past and achieve viable peace without bringing perpetrators of egregious human rights violations to justice. "The past must not continue," she said.   In addition, women"s rights are frequently trampled in Afghanistan. A December 2009 OHCHR report presented at the UN Human Rights Council in March 2010 details a number of setbacks.   The Shia Personal Status Law - promulgated by President Hamid Karzai in July 2009 - has been described as a law which "legitimizes discriminatory practices against women".   "The law paves the way for further restrictions on the rights of all Afghan women, and jeopardizes hard-won gains in the context of efforts to counter violence and discrimination against Afghan women," said the report.   Meanwhile, the OHCHR, which operates under the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and monitors the impact of war on civilians, has warned about the increasing number of civilian casualties over the past three years.   Over 2,400 civilians lost their lives as a result of armed violence in 2009. UNAMA recorded 385 civilian deaths in January and February 2010 - a 30 percent increase on the same period last year.   It also attributed 55 percent of the total civilian deaths in the first two months of this year to anti-government elements and 39 percent to pro-government Afghan and foreign forces. Visit the related web page
	The church is in the news for all the wrong reasons by NYT / AFP & agencies   May 2010   Pope issues his most direct words to date on abuse crisis. (NYT)   Pope Benedict XVI issued his most forceful remarks on the sexual abuse crisis sweeping the Catholic Church. He called it “truly terrifying” and, in a marked shift in tone, suggested that its origins lay with abusive priests and with highly placed church officials who for decades concealed or minimised the problem.   The problem, he said, was “the sin inside the church,” and by implication not accusations from victims or the media.   “Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice,” he said, in remarks that underscored the Vatican’s recent if fitful efforts to break with a longstanding practice of handling abuse cases inside the church, rather than reporting abuse to civil authorities for prosecution.   Victims groups said they were still waiting for concrete action more than words, and the Vatican has not yet announced whether it will change its norms for handling abuse. But the Pope’s comments, made to reporters on board a plane at the start of a four-day visit to Portugal, were by far his strongest, after weeks in which top Vatican officials sought to minimise the issue, despite new revelations of abuse cropping up around the Catholic world.   “This is as clear an example of the Pope changing the Vatican’s public tone as you’re going to see,” said John L. Allen Jr., a Vatican expert and columnist for the National Catholic Reporter.   Benedict, who has been criticised for not acting aggressively enough against allegations of abuse as archbishop of Munich and later as the head of a powerful Vatican office, said, “Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church.”   His remarks were at once aimed inside the church — a warning to clerics that crimes would not be tolerated — and outside, indicating for the first time since the abuse crisis had swelled in Europe that he personally understood the depth of the problem.   March 2010   Pope Benedict XVI has apologised for Irish priests child sex abuse, but victims say it"s not enough to address the growing scandal.   The pastoral letter, which came with the sex abuse scandal having spread to several countries, including the Pope"s native Germany, also said Irish bishops "failed" in addressing the problem.   "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," the pope said in the long-awaited letter to Irish Catholics, in which he also expressed "shame and remorse".. "I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced."   The Pope said priests and religious workers guilty of child abuse "must answer" for their crimes "before properly constituted tribunals".   Despite the letter"s remorse and criticism of Irish Catholic officials, victims in Ireland say they deserve more after years of being denied justice.   "Victims were hoping for an acknowledgment of the scurrilous ways in which they have been treated as they attempted to bring their experiences of abuse to the attention of the Church authorities," Maeve Lewis, director of the One in Four victims group, said.   John Kelly, of Survivors of Child Abuse and who himself was sexually abused as a boy in a Catholic care home, told AFP the letter leaves many questions unanswered.   "Is the pope now saying we will have a national inquiry into abuse in all the dioceses?" he said. "In short, the basic question is: are the victims likely to get justice as a result of what the Pope has said?"   In the United States, where child abuse cases involving priests that began to emerge in 2002 led the US Roman Catholic Church to reach multi-million-dollar compensation deals, victims also criticised the letter.   "The Pope offers words when action is so desperately needed," the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement.   Predominantly Catholic Ireland has been shocked by three judicial reports in the last five years revealing ill-treatment, abuse and cruelty by clerics and a cover up of their activities by church authorities.   Since the Irish cases emerged, abuse scandals have come to light in the Pope"s native Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland, among other countries.   Germany"s top archbishop said the Pope"s letter should also be considered a "warning" to his own country"s Catholic Church, while Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said it addressed the anger that "is not limited to Ireland".   * Below is a link to the report "The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010 by John Jay College, City University, New York.
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