The UN airlifted $1.8 billion into Afghanistan between December 2021 and January 2023, funding an aid lifeline for the nation’s 38 million citizens and shoring up the domestic economy.
Alakbarov said the Taliban government order was a “huge violation” of women’s rights. “Women are absolutely essential to all aspects of our service delivery work in Afghanistan,” he said.
The UN’s 400 female Afghan employees are the bulk of its 600 female staff working in Afghanistan. In total, there are about 3,300 Afghans in the 3,900-strong UN workforce there.
The Taliban authorities ordered all NGOs in December to stop employing Afghan women after receiving “serious complaints” that women employees were not observing a proper Islamic dress code.
“These justifications have no basis considering what we know about Islam,” said Alakbarov. Several conservative countries in the region still allow women to study and work, he said.
Several NGOs suspended their entire operations in protest after the ban was announced, piling further misery on Afghanistan’s citizens, half of whom are facing hunger, according to aid agencies.
It was agreed after days of discussion that women working in the health aid sector would be exempt from the decree.
Aid workers say female employees are crucial in delivering help to women beneficiaries in a deeply conservative and patriarchal country such as Afghanistan.
The restriction will also hamper donation-raising efforts by the UN at a time when Afghanistan is enduring one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, Alakbarov said.
The Taliban government has imposed an austere interpretation of Islam since surging back to power.
Authorities have barred teenage girls from secondary school, women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside the home, ideally with a burqa.
Women have also been banned from universities and are not allowed to enter parks or gardens.
Source- Hindustan Times.