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The United States has a right to respond to the 11 September suicide attacks against it by striking at terrorist networks and the states that support them, but must also weigh carefully the humanitarian consequences of any military action, especially in a country as vulnerable as Afghanistan, the US-based Refugees International stated on Monday.
Afghanistan was already the site of the greatest hunger and displacement crisis in the world before some 100,000 Afghans fled the capital, Kabul, and other cities, hoping to avoid an American response to the terrorist atrocities of a fortnight ago, Refugees International said.
“Given the fragility of life in Afghanistan, any military operation there is bound to hurt the general public,” the NGO stated. The US should maintain the moral high ground, and in planning any armed intervention take steps “to minimise the danger to people already tottering on the edge of famine, and to repair humanitarian damage as soon as possible,” it added.
Also on Monday, the human rights organisation Amnesty International called on US President George W. Bush “to uphold the highest international human rights standards in his administration’s response to the horrific acts of 11 September”.
Amnesty’s secretary-general, Irene Khan, reiterated her organisation’s condemnation of the attacks, and urged the US “to take every necessary human rights precaution in the pursuit of justice, rather than revenge, for the victims of this terrible crime”.
She urged Bush to ensure “that anger does not give way to retaliatory injustices”, and welcomed his remarks in support of Muslim American and other communities rendered vulnerable by the public backlash in reaction to the terrorist attacks.
Amnesty called on the Bush administration and the UN Security Council to use all appropriate means to bring those responsible to justice “within the framework of a fair and accountable criminal justice system, and with full respect for international standards for a fair trial”.
It also urged the administration to “fully explore every measure possible to bring the perpetrators to justice before resorting to armed intervention”.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday called for the new coalition against terrorism to be built through the United Nations in order give it long-term legitimacy. The response to the US attacks “must be one that strengthened international peace and security by cementing ties among nations, rather than subjecting them to new strains”, he added.
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In the event of armed intervention, Amnesty on Monday urged all parties to uphold at all times the highest standards of human rights and humanitarian law.
“This includes taking all precautions to spare civilians and, in particular, avoiding direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks, and attacks on military targets that have a disproportionate impact on civilians,” Khan said.
Considering that the US had declared a war on international terrorism and not on the Afghan people, it needed to find a way to resume relief operations in Afghanistan, and to get food aid flowing to people there, Refugees International pointed out.
A humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan or elsewhere, if attributed to the US, could leave American people even more vulnerable to terrorism in the future, it said. “The US wants to win the war against terrorism - not sow the seeds of future problems.”
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers on Monday joined those warning against any “disproportionate” military retaliation by Washington in Afghanistan, saying that it would deepen the misery of the Afghan people, Reuters news agency reported.
International agencies, including UNHCR, were planning a joint appeal later this week for funds for the humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan. Lubbers said the sum required would be large, but only a drop in the ocean against what was being spent on the US-led military build-up, or on bailing out world airlines, which have suffered massive losses in the wake of the 11 September atrocities.
“I am not going to go into numbers, but even if it is many hundreds of millions of dollars, it is tiny compared with the cost of military action”, Reuters quoted Lubbers as saying.
On Wednesday, a UN inter-agency group is due to visit 12 of 70 sites selected by the Pakistani government in the North West Frontier Province which could be used for refugees if it becomes necessary.
UN agencies and NGOs are also finalising an emergency assistance plan for civilians inside Afghanistan, outlining assistance needs and relief plans up to March 2002, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) for Afghanistan.
An emergency alert was being prepared for donors, with food, water, public health, sanitation and shelter materials among the priority materials, UNOCHA said.
Meanwhile, relief agencies are planning to relocate regional offices they had in Afghanistan to neighbouring countries to allow them to pre-position staff and supplies in order to continue relief efforts to vulnerable Afghan populations.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
