UNITED NATIONS, Apr 05 (APP): Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have issued an order banning Afghan women who are UN staff members from continuing to work, a UN spokesperson has said, calling the move “disturbing”.
“Our colleagues on the ground at the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the UN from working,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, told reporters at UN Headquarters during the regular noon briefing on Tuesday.
“We are still looking into how this development would affect our operations in the country,” he said. “We expect to have more meetings with the de facto authorities tomorrow (Wednesday) in Kabul, on which we are trying to seek some clarity.”
Dujarric said this was the latest in a “disturbing trend” undermining the ability of aid organizations to work in Afghanistan where some 23 million people – more than half the country’s population – need help.
Following Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban in August 2021, the UN remained committed to stay and deliver, while calling for unified support for the country’s people.
Despite relatively constructive initial engagements with Taliban authorities, decisions over the last year by the fundamentalist leadership have included bans on
Answering questions from reporters, Dujarric said an official communication coming from the Taliban leadership, had indicated that the order would apply to the whole country.
“We hope we will hear strong voices from the UN Security Council,” he said, noting that the UN mission operates under its mandate.
For the Secretary-General, any such ban would be unacceptable and “frankly inconceivable”, Dujarric said.
On its part. Pakistan has been calling on the Afghanistan’s Interim Government to reverse restrictions on women and girls in the country.
Speaking at a press briefing on the outcome of the Women in Islam Conference in New York last month, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the actions on Afghan women and girls are not the norm within the Muslim world.
“There is no other country on the planet, Muslim or otherwise, that condones depriving women and girls from the right to education,” FM Bilawal had said.
The latest decision focussed on UN staff, is just the latest in a disturbing trend of edicts, undermining the ability of aid organizations to reach those most in need, he added.
“It goes without saying, but unfortunately, it does need saying, that female staff are essential for the United Nations to deliver life-saving assistance,” he said.
“Such orders, as we saw today, violate the fundamental rights of women and infringe upon the principle of non-discrimination,” he said. “Female staff members are essential to ensure the continuation of the UN operations on the ground in Afghanistan.”
“We will continue to pursue all avenues to ensure that we can reach the most vulnerable people, especially women and girls”.
In March, Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva, UN Special Representative and head of the UNAMA Assistance Mission, told the Security Council that Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the “most repressive country in the world [for] women’s rights”.
“At a moment when [the country] needs all of its human capital to recover from decades of war, half of its potential doctors, scientists, journalists, and politicians are shut away in their homes, their dreams crushed, and their talents confiscated,” she said in a briefing to the Council.