Taliban Committee on Human Rights

While the Taliban’s recent proposal to form a joint human rights committee is highly suspect, it does raise questions about how to count civilian casualties and equally how to prevent them. “Though differences exist, the UN and Nato at least have a basic common understanding of what constitutes civilian harm and what is called for under international law to protect civilians. Despite this, they strongly disagree on numbers of civilian casualties and the UN has never agreed to Isaf proposals for joint investigations and findings. In contrast, the Taliban has a fundamentally different view of who is a civilian to the UN, other international human rights monitors and many Islamic scholars, for that matter.”