UN Launches New Accountability Mechanism For Afghanistan
(ANALYSIS) On Oct. 6, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted, without a vote, a resolution on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, which is to strengthen accountability efforts in Afghanistan.
The resolution, led by the European Union, paves the way to the establishment of the independent investigative mechanism on Afghanistan that will collect evidence of international crimes and the most serious violations of international law.
This is the result of tireless advocacy by victims/survivors, human rights defenders and national and international organizations for the last four years. The new mechanism will add to the existing accountability efforts and one to counter impunity, which flourishes under the Taliban de facto regime.
The new mechanism will collect and preserve evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave rights abuses; identify individuals responsible; and prepare files that can be used to support their prosecution in national and international courts.
As such, the mechanism will do similar work currently being done by the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM) and the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). Among others, the IIIM has been collecting, consolidating, preserving and analyzing evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses in Syria and preparing files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings.
The evidence collected this way has been used by prosecutors in at least 12 jurisdictions and has helped to combat impunity, even at a time when it was clear that ensuring accountability domestically in Syria was not possible.
This is also the hope for Afghanistan. As it stands, justice and accountability avenues in Afghanistan are nonexistent, with the Taliban de facto authorities in power. However, this may change in the future. The sooner the evidence is collected and preserved, the better the chances this the evidence could help to ensure justice in the future.
Furthermore, as legal avenues in Afghanistan are nonexistent at the moment, the evidence collected through the new mechanism could be used in other jurisdictions, including through the principle of universal jurisdiction. The principle of universal jurisdiction allows for the prosecution of crimes such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and enforced disappearances committed on foreign territory by persons who are not nationals of the jurisdiction in question.
Among others, the use of universal jurisdiction enabled German domestic courts to prosecute members of Daesh (also known as the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL) for genocide and crimes against humanity and perpetrators of torture and other international crimes in Syria.
While it is most likely that the new body will not be able to enter Afghanistan to collect evidence, the precedent of the IIIM shows that, in many cases, effective evidence collection can be done remotely.
You can read the rest of Ewelina Ochab’s post at Forbes.com.
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She’s authored the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of genocide and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world. She is on X @EwelinaUO.