UN presses Afghanistan for ban reversal
UNITED NATIONS — A strong majority of the U.N. Security Council urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers Friday to immediately reverse all “oppressive” restrictions on girls and women.
The council then went into a closed meeting to discuss the Taliban’s latest ban on woman working for humanitarian groups, a move that is exacerbating the already critical humanitarian crisis in the country.
The joint statement from 11 of the 15 council members said female aid workers are crucial to addressing Afghanistan’s “dire humanitarian situation” because they provide “critical life-saving support to women and girls” that men can’t reach. It reiterated the council’s demand for “unhindered access for humanitarian actors regardless of gender.”
Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, tweeted that as of Thursday, “15% of NGOs had paused all work in Afghanistan, 68% had significantly reduced operations.” She added: “Humanitarian aid can’t happen without women.”
Japanese Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane, the current council president, delivered the statement to reporters surrounded by diplomats from the 10 other countries — Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Malta, Switzerland, Britain, United States and United Arab Emirates, which called the meeting.
The four council nations that didn’t support the statement were Russia, China, Ghana and Mozambique.
The 11 council members also urged the immediate reversal of the Taliban’s ban on girls attending secondary school and girls and women attending university as well as restrictions on women’s human rights and freedoms.
Diplomats said some countries are pushing for a Security Council resolution demanding the Taliban reverse all its edicts on women and girls, but it was too early to say if that would happen.
David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said last year its 8,000 staff, including 3,000 women, served 5.3 million Afghans across the country including 2.7 million women and girls.
But the group has been forced to pause most operations because of the decree banning female NGO staff from working, Miliband said in a prepared briefing to the council.
He called for “a united international response across the humanitarian movement, led by the U.N., to re-establish the right of NGOs to employ women.”
In another prepared briefing, Catherine Russell, executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said the decree banning women from working for NGOs “is both wrong and dangerous” and “stands to deepen the country’s devastating humanitarian crisis.”