UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the Taliban to immediately reverse its decision to ban Afghan women from working for the organization in the country. In a statement, the UN spokesman stressed that these women are essential to humanitarian operations and that the implementation of this decision will have a direct impact on the Afghan population that depends on this assistance. The UN announced on Tuesday that the Taliban government has banned women from working for the organization throughout the country, which is against the UN Charter and violates women’s rights.
Of the 3,900 people working for the UN in Afghanistan, some 600 are women, and 400 of them are Afghans. In a country suffering from one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, some 23 million people depend on humanitarian aid. The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua), Rosa Otounbaïeva, declared that no other regime in the history of the United Nations had ever tried to ban women from working for the organization simply because they were women.
Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban have multiplied measures to curtail the rights of women, who have been banned from going to university and high school, excluded from many public jobs or receive poverty wages, cannot travel without the company of a male relative, and must fully cover their bodies when in public spaces.
Guterres also called for the withdrawal of all restrictive measures against women and girls in the areas of work, education, and freedom of movement. The move against the UN was preceded on December 24, 2022, by a similar move against NGOs. Numerous donors and contributors have suspended funding to aid programs for Afghanistan, warned the agency’s humanitarian aid coordinator in Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov. So far, the UN’s 2023 aid program has only raised 3-4% of what was planned.