SAN SALVADOR : Monitoring Human Rights

A unique human rights monitoring team, sponsored by the United Nations, begins work Friday under an agreement between the government of El Salvador and the Marxist guerrilla organization known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Financed by a U.N. Security Council grant of $23 million, an initial international force of 110 civilian, military and police human rights experts will work out of six offices throughout the country to observe human rights practices by both sides in the civil war that has dragged on since 1979. This marks the first time that the world body has set up a mission in a member state to monitor human rights.

Since 1979, about 75,000 Salvadorans, most of them civilians, have been killed in the country’s civil war. The Salvadoran armed forces and right-wing death squads bear the brunt of the responsibility for the killings, international human rights groups say.