Save the Children’s nutrition consultant, right, explains to Nelab, 22, how to feed her 11-month-old daughter, Parsto, healing food, which is used to treat severe acute malnutrition, in Afghanistan’s Sar-e-Pul province in September 2022.
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Save the Children’s nutrition consultant, right, explains to Nelab, 22, how to feed her 11-month-old daughter, Parsto, healing food, which is used to treat severe acute malnutrition, in Afghanistan’s Sar-e-Pul province in September 2022.
Save Children Through AP
KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior United Nations official in Afghanistan met the deputy prime minister of the Taliban-led government on Sunday to discuss a ban on women working for non-governmental groups that the Afghan government has denied. announced in a press conference. a series of measures to push back women’s rights.
The Taliban government’s decision to ban women from working for NGOs has prompted major international aid agencies to suspend operations in the country. The ban has raised fears that people will be deprived of food, education, health care and other vital services, as more than half of Afghanistan’s population needs urgent humanitarian assistance.
Aid agencies have warned the ban would have dire consequences and “hundreds of thousands” of Afghans would die as a result of the Taliban’s decision.
The Deputy Head of the United Nations Mission to Afghanistan, Potzel Markus, met with Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi in the capital Kabul to discuss the ban, as well as other measures including banning women from entering universities.
“Prohibiting women from working in NGOs, denying girls and women education and training, harms millions in Afghanistan and prevents vital aid delivery to men. , Afghan women and children,” the UN mission said.
Potzel is the latest United Nations official to meet the Taliban’s leadership amid growing international concern about curtailing women’s freedoms in Afghanistan.
Last Monday, the acting head of the UN mission Ramiz Alakbarov met with Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammed Hanif.
Hanif issued a ban on NGOs on December 24, attributed to women not wearing a hijab or a Muslim hijab properly. He said any organization found not to comply with the order would have its license revoked.
Aid agencies have been providing essential services and assistance in the face of the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
The Taliban takeover in 2021, as US and NATO forces are in the final weeks of their withdrawal after 20 years of war, has thrown the Afghan economy into disarray and transformed the country, pushing millions of people fall into poverty. Foreign aid stopped almost overnight.
Sanctions against the Taliban rulers, including a halt to bank transfers and a freeze on billions of dollars in foreign assets, have limited access to global institutions. Money from aid agencies helped support the country’s aid-dependent economy before the Taliban took over.
United Nations aid director Martin Griffiths will visit Afghanistan to discuss the ban.
Potzel’s meeting with Hanafi came amid a United Nations survey that found that one-third of women-led NGOs in Afghanistan have been forced to shut down 70 percent of their operations due to the ban and about 70 percent of their activities. 1/3 has stopped all activities.
The UN Women’s Department said that 86% of the 151 organizations surveyed were either decommissioned or partially operational.
It also said the lack of women in aid distribution has had a significant impact on the Afghan people.
