• As a group of fifteen national and international organizations focused on alleviating poverty, addressing humanitarian needs and helping individuals to access their basic rights, we are deeply concerned about the challenges facing many Afghans.
• While the recent electoral process was deeply flawed, the situation is critical and demands urgent action from the Afghan government and other key stakeholders.
• In many places where our organizations work, state institutions are extremely weak and unable to provide services. In Daikundi province, for example, less than one percent of schools have a building in which to hold classes and running water and electricity are rare. Conditions are often worse in rural areas, where unemployment is estimated to be as high as 50% and access to health services, particularly for women, remains limited. Approximately every half hour, one Afghan woman dies from pregnancy-related complications and another from tuberculosis.
• Weaknesses in state structures have been compounded by corruption and a lack of transparency at all levels.
• The situation for women and girls is increasingly precarious, with initial gains made after the fall of the Taliban being rapidly eroded. Women in public life are subject to threats, intimidation and violence and girls' schools are frequently targeted and attacked by insurgents, particularly in the south and east.
• Despite a new military strategy focused on protecting the population, allegations of abuse and corruption against Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have undermined public trust and created fear and resentment.

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• A unique resource for a unique context, The A to Z Guide to Afghanistan Assistance aims to enhance understanding of the dizzying array of actors, structures and government processes related to aid and reconstruction efforts in the country. The 2009 (seventh) edition is now available—in hard copy at the AREU office in Kabul or for download from The A to Z Guide page of this website.

   

  The A to Z Guide provides an extensive glossary of assist­ance terms, an overview of Afghanistan’s system of government, a series of country and city maps, key primary documents, and an extensive contact directory that includes government agencies, NGOs, donors and international actors.

   

  The guide, which is AREU’s flagship publication, has been updated annually since its first edition in 2002. It is also published in Dari and Pashto.

   

  The information presented in the guide relies on the voluntary contribution of agencies and organisations, and the situation in Afghanistan can change rapidly. Users of the guide are encouraged to contact AREU with suggestions for additions, corrections or improvements by emailing   <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  <!--  var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to';  var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '=';  var addy74452 = 'publications' + '@';  addy74452 = addy74452 + 'areu' + '.' + 'org' + '.' + 'af';  var addy_text74452 = 'publications' + '@' + 'areu' + '.' + 'org' + '.' + 'af';  document.write( '<a ' + path + '\'' + prefix + ':' + addy74452 + '\'>' );  document.write( addy_text74452 );  document.write( '<\/a>' );  //-->  </script>publications@areu.org.af<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  <!--  document.write( '<span style=\'display: none;\'>' );  //-->  </script>This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  <!--  document.write( '</' );  document.write( 'span>' );  //-->  </script>.

• Canada’s role in Gadhafi’s fall

     

  NATO’s bombing of Libya was based on a doctrine championed by Ottawa to protect civilians.
• By:    Olivia Ward    Foreign Affairs Reporter,      Published on Sat Oct 22 2011

• In the Libyan desert, near the tunnel where he was hiding, the country’s four-decade strongman Moammar Gadhafi met a bloody end.

   

  But the trail to Gadhafi’s last stand was a long and twisting one, leading through Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo — and Ottawa.

   

  Gadhafi’s fall followed a seven-month NATO bombing campaign that was the first internationally authorized use of force to protect civilians, a doctrine known as R2P, or responsibility to protect.

   

  And it marks the 10th anniversary of the Canadian-backed report on humanitarian intervention that created a framework for protecting civilians in peril and changed the way we think about the once-sacred concept of national sovereignty.

• Ten years on, with Libya’s future hanging in the balance, the fate of the doctrine is still unclear. If Libya becomes a failed state, advocates fear, naysayers will have ammunition to shoot down the next attempt to curb massive atrocities.

   

  “Responsibility to protect will always be controversial,” says the report’s co-author, Michael Ignatieff, who will speak on the subject at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Oct. 26.

   

  “If you look carefully at the UN debate on Libya, you can see there never was overwhelming consensus for the responsibility to protect. What we can be proud of is that we provided the language of the debate.”

• It was the bloodshed, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the 1990s that shocked the international community out of its centuries-old conviction that sovereign states could do as they pleased with their people. The world seemed ready for change, and Canada took the lead.

   

  “Back in the mid 1990s we adopted human security as the basis of our foreign policy,” says then foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, now president of the University of Winnipeg. “We were elected to the UN Security Council on a platform of protection for civilians.”

   

  Canada was not alone in challenging the age-old notion of ironclad sovereignty. Other scholars and diplomats had laid the groundwork, and then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan touched off a fierce debate on sovereignty vs. human rights.

• But it was Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s attacks on the Albanian population of the southern province of Kosovo in 1998 that tipped the balance, says Axworthy.

   

  “I went through the same anguish over the killings in Kosovo that many people did,” he said. “That was the moment when I knew there had to be a way forward that wasn’t based on ad hoc action.”

   

  As reports surfaced of the killing or expulsion of thousands of Kosovars, diplomats struggled for a solution. But the push for UN-authorized military action failed when Russia and China opposed it, and NATO countries decided to go it alone.

   

  Their bombing campaign met with success. It drove out Milosevic’s forces in less than three months.

   

  But in Ottawa, Axworthy and then prime minister Jean Chretien were unsatisfied. They had won the battle in Kosovo, but lost the wider war against state impunity.

• “There were no rules, there was no framework,” said Axworthy. “So we set up a commission on intervention and state sovereignty.”

   

  Co-chaired by Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, and Algerian diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun, it was launched by a chance meeting between Axworthy and Annan in Atlanta, Ga. — at a party thrown by CNN.

   

  Like Axworthy, Annan believed the commission’s report on R2P could be a catalyst. But he was reluctant to put it through the grindingly slow UN bureaucratic machinery.

   

  “He asked Canada to sponsor the commission on its own, and agreed that when the results were in he would bring them into his orbit of responsibility as secretary-general,” Axworthy recalled. “We had a deal.”

   

  After months of global research, Ignatieff and his co-authors, Evans and international security expert Ramesh Thakur, wrote the report. And four years later, in September 2005, it was endorsed by a UN summit.

   

  It would be six years before it was put it into practice.

   

• The UN Security Council’s decision to create a no-fly zone in Libya, when Gadhafi threatened a massive attack on the opposition town of Benghazi, was a milestone for R2P. But experts are divided on whether Libya’s “mission creep” to regime change has furthered the cause, or made it more difficult for the future.

   

  “Some people think of (R2P) as a Western ploy or an opportunity for plunder,” says Kyle Matthews of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. “But the real problem is those on the Security Council with veto power. China and Russia are ideologically against it, and they even use their vetoes to block sanctions.”

• The lack of a standing UN force that can be called on to deal with atrocities also makes it harder to raise support for action against aggressive countries at a time of widespread austerity. And some argue that waging war for one country’s vulnerable citizens while ignoring others makes a mockery of R2P.

   

  But supporters point out that the responsibility to protect is more than military intervention. When there is early warning of massive attacks on civilians its first line of defence should be preventive diplomacy, and if that fails, escalating non-military pressure on abusers. Force would be a last resort.

   

  But if it is used, post-conflict support would be a crucial next step.
• “Responsibility to protect is about three things,” says Ignatieff. “Prevent, react, rebuild. In Libya, the long term outcome is in their hands. It’s up to (Libyans) to decide what it will be. But we must be there, and ready to help them.”

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