Afghanistan: HAG Quarterly Report (October to December 2020)
Format
The HAG quarterly report analyses access restrictions encountered by humanitarian workers during the fourth quarter of 2020 (Q4 2020). The report is based on the Access Monitoring and Reporting Framework, which records access impediments encountered by humanitarians in Afghanistan and logs them according to seven different categories of access constraints, which are then further divided into different types of access incidents.
Summary
• Humanitarian partners in Afghanistan continue to deliver much needed services to people in need despite a continuously challenging access environment;
• 2020, the HAG recorded 1095 access impediments, compared to 444 in 2019;
• The increase was driven by a fourfold rise in recorded interference attempts and movement restrictions by conflict parties;
A Road Map for Tackling Cybercrime
J. Edgar Hoover Building (Brunswyk, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington DC FBI J. Edgar Hoover Building Brunswyk (2012). Edgar Hoover Building Brunswyk (2012) retouched.jpg; CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
As the United States moved to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, the criminals took notice and acted. After the pandemic’s onset, the FBI saw an uptick in daily cybercrime reports in April of more than 400 percent compared to typical complaint rates. But the recent surge in ransomware attacks against health care systems, such as the University of Vermont’s Health Network, demonstrates that the impact of ransomware isn’t limited to financial crimes. What was initially dismissed as a digital version of extortion has now turned into a crime of life and death, as Germany has tragically found.