Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ New York: The United Nations said on Wednesday that ‘time-critical’ aid programs in Afghanistan have temporarily been halted and warned of a likely pause in other activities amid a ban on women aid workers by the Taliban-led administration.
In a joint statement, the UN aid chief Martin Griffiths, the heads of UN agencies and several aid groups called on the authorities to reverse the decision, saying that women’s “participation in aid delivery is not negotiable and must continue.”
The statement by UN read, “We cannot ignore operational constraints now facing us as a humanitarian community,” adding, “We could endeavor continue lifesaving, time-critical activities. But we foresee that a many activities will need to be paused as we cannot deliver principled humanitarian assistance without female fund workers.”
“No country could afford to exclude half of its population from contributing to society,” read the statement, which had also signed by a heads of UNICEF, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, the UN Development Programme, and UN high commissioners for refugees and human rights.
28mn Afghans currently require assistance: UN
The UN statement said that the ban on women aid workers “comes at a time when more than 28 million citizens of Afghanistan require assistance to survive as a country grapples with the risk of famine conditions, economic decline, entrenched poverty and a brutal winter.”
Separately, 12 countries and the EU jointly also called on the Taliban to end the ban on female aid workers and permit women and girls to return to school.
“Restricting females from humanitarian work has immediate life-threatening consequences for all Afghans. some time-critical programmes have was to stop temporarily due to lack of female staff,” read the joint-statement.
The ban on women aid workers was announced by the Taliban-led administration on Saturday. It follows the restrictions imposed in the previous week on women attending universities.
