UN slams Taliban’s ban on its Afghan women employees for impeding ‘life-saving’ work

UN officials in Afghanistan told by Taliban to ban women staff from working

Afghan women wait to receive food aid from the Afghanistan Disaster Management, in Herat (AFP via Getty Images)

The UN has criticised the Taliban’s decision to prevent Afghanistan’s women from working for the global agency as staff members.

This comes a day after the agency asked 3,300 Afghan staffers to not come to work in the country’s UN office for the next two days as the Taliban moved to ban women staffers from working in the country’s Nangarhar province.

The UN’s secretary-general said on Wednesday that the Taliban’s move is a blow to women’s involvement in the agency’s “life-saving” work.

“I strongly condemn the prohibition of our Afghan female colleagues from working in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. If this measure is not reversed, it will inevitably undermine our ability to deliver life-saving aid to the people who need it,” tweeted Antonio Guterres.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said UN officials “received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the United Nations from working”.

The latest ban on women was “another gross violation” of their fundamental rights, said Richard Bennett, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, who added that this was against the UN’s charter.

The Taliban should reverse their decision, he said.

Nearly 3,900 people are working under the UN as staff in Afghanistan – including approximately 3,300 Afghans and 600 international personnel, the official said.

These numbers include 600 Afghan women and 200 women from other countries.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the agency’s political mission in the south Asian nation, is headed by a woman, Roza Otunbayeva, who was a former president and foreign minister of the Kyrgyz Republic.

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According to the mission and Mr Dujarric, there has been no response from the Taliban regarding the UN’s senior leadership.

Within a year of taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban has gradually rolled out restrictions, especially targeting women by shutting down schools, colleges and universities along with umbrella bans on education and NGO work, drawing fierce international condemnation.

This has not pushed the Taliban into removing the bans, which it claims are temporary suspensions allegedly because women were not wearing the Islamic headscarf, or hijab, correctly and because gender segregation rules were not being followed.