UN chief warned that if the decision is not reversed, it will inevitably undermine UN’s ability to deliver life-saving aid to the people who need it…reports Asian Lite News
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday condemned the ban on Afghan women working with the UN in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, Afghanistan-based Khaama Press reported.
Antonio Guterres in a tweet said: “I strongly condemn the prohibition of our Afghan female colleagues from working in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.” Guterres stressed that the prohibition on female workers would undermine the ability to deliver life-saving aid to the most needful people of Afghanistan, including women and children, according to Khaama Press.
“If this measure is not reversed, it will inevitably undermine our ability to deliver life-saving aid to the people who need it,” he said.
The UN expressed “serious concerns” after the Afghan female UN staff were on Tuesday banned from reporting to work in the eastern province of Afghanistan, Nangarhar, Khaama Press reported.
The UN said: “The United Nations in Afghanistan expresses serious concern that female national UN staff have been prevented from reporting to work in Nangarhar province.”
The UN warned the Taliban that the life-saving aid would be at risk without female staff since most of the International organization’s staff are female.
International organizations, including the UN, have repeatedly expressed their concerns over excluding women from the aid sector, saying that without female staff, the organizations will be unable to reach needy women.
The Taliban since it came to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, has imposed bans on women and girls, preventing them from education and employment.
The Taliban first banned girls from going to school beyond sixth grade; in December 2022, a decree prohibited Afghan women from higher education and working with national and international NGOs.
Pledges solidarity
“We stand in full solidarity with our colleagues, and all women who every day put their lives at risk to serve their country and we salute their dedication, professionalism, and bravery. We re-assert their inalienable, fundamental human rights as enshrined in the UN Charter,” Sima Bahous, UN Undersecretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, said in a statement.
“We will not replace our female workforce with men,” she said, adding that UN Women is determined to continue in every way possible to deliver vital services and support, so no woman or girl will be left out or left behind, Xinhua news agency reported.
Afghanistan is in a humanitarian crisis with 28.3 million people, two-thirds of the population, needing humanitarian assistance to survive. Nearly a quarter of households in Afghanistan are female-headed, she noted.
The removal of skilled women aid workers decreases access by women and girls to critical life-saving services, and increases their risks when they have to seek assistance from men instead, said Bahous.
The de-facto authorities’ denial of women’s and girls’ rights to education and to engagement in society and the economy of Afghanistan is a self-inflicted wound on the country. This damage to future recovery and resilience deepens with every woman and girl whose horizons have been forcibly shrunk to her home’s four walls, she added.
UN Women joins UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in calling on the Taliban to immediately revoke this latest decision and reverse all measures that restrict women’s and girls’ rights to work, education and freedom of movement, she said.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Wednesday that the world body is instructing all its Afghan national staff — men and women — not to report to the office for now. In addition, UN national female staff in Afghanistan will not see their posts to be backfilled by men.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Secretary-General’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan, said the Afghan UN national staff — Afghan men and women — are in solidarity.
“We will not have a situation where we are going to work with all-men teams. So our national staff will report to the office together,” he told a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York through a video link.
Alakbarov said the United Nations is working to create the normal conditions so that the Afghan UN national staff could return to work. He said everybody will be paid even when they have to stay home.
The United Nations has about 3,900 staff in Afghanistan, nearly 3,300 of them are nationals. Of those, there are about 400 women nationals and 200 women internationals.