Thank you very much.
On your first question, the victimization of boys in particular in Afghanistan was well known to agencies working on the ground for a long time--UNICEF, for instance--but it had not penetrated mass media. It just started to surface in recent years, and it's clearly very much part of the concerns we have to address in terms of the welfare of children generally.
You asked whether assaults, particularly sexual assaults, tended to be perpetrated more by security forces, such as the military or the police, or by civilians. I think that in virtually all the societies from Afghanistan to the Congo, for instance, where we see massive sexual violence, it was not all invented by the conflict. A lot of violence was quite prevalent. In Haiti it is the same thing. It is very prevalent in societies in which impunity is rampant. Discrimination against women and neglect of children are very prevalent, and therefore these practices are largely entrenched and extremely difficult to reverse.
Certainly the studies I've seen suggest that in Afghanistan almost 80% to 85% of sexual violence against women is perpetrated by family members, so in answer to your question, this would be very much a civilian-based form of sexual violence, which is not to say that security forces don't do it as a form of retaliation, particularly when opportunities present themselves when they have people in detention. We see it in these kinds of environments. I think it depends largely....
I don't know the breakdown of the statistics. For instance, in the Congo there's been a lot of attention to the question of sexual violence. It's usually portrayed as being primarily caused by militias and armed forces, including the armed forces of the government of the DRC and a whole range of militias on all sides. They're usually described as the main perpetrators of sexual violence. I don't know the extent. It's also very prevalent in civilian societies and within family units, and I suspect it's just as unpunished when it comes from these sources.
Finally, you mentioned what life was like and what justice was like under the Taliban. I think we have a pretty good sense of that. What's very alarming now is the lack of official justice infrastructure in Afghanistan, which we have documented. We've published a series of reports. In particular, deficiencies of the justice system in Afghanistan are very alarming in part because it has fed into the insurgency, appalling as it may seem, and we, the International Crisis Group, have people on the ground who could document that. Some people who despair of getting any form of non-corrupt, reliable justice from their government will turn to the Taliban for their resolution. It starts with land disputes and neighbour disputes and redress after an assault. They will turn to the Taliban, which, everything else being equal, would not necessarily be their first choice to dispense justice, but there's no alternative. The state is so profoundly absent.
After almost a decade of international efforts in Afghanistan, it's quite alarming to see how little institution-building will have been left behind by the time international public interest fades for the pursuance of not only of the combat operations, but of an international development presence in Afghanistan. That is particularly alarming.
I think the World Bank, which is in the process of finishing a report on the relationship between development and conflict, will come out endorsing exactly that: investment. Long-term investment in institution-building is the only way to leave behind a set of functioning institutions in the justice sector after conflict.
Until that is in place, I think everything else will fail at addressing these issues, particularly the issues of sexual violence and discrimination against women.