The leadership of the Taliban in Afghanistan is finalising guidelines to reverse the ban on women working for international and domestic aid agencies, according to the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland.
During a visit to the headquarters of the Taliban in Kandahar, Mr Egeland met a senior associate of the Taliban’s top leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who imposed the ban in December. Mr Egeland said the guidelines would be put into effect soon, although no timeline was given.
The Taliban has repeatedly failed to honour promises to lift bans on the employment of women in humanitarian work, which limits the efforts of aid agencies to assist the 23 million needy Afghans in a population of 34 million. While 22 per cent of the population dwells in cities and towns, 78 per cent lives in rural areas, making delivery of humanitarian aid and services all the more challenging.
In an emotional interview with the BBC, Mr Egeland said relief agencies cannot operate fully without women staff who can provide aid and medical care to widows and women heads of household. The ultra-conservative Taliban bars contact between women and men who are not close relatives. Women have been barred from governmental and commercial employment, from parks and gyms, and from travelling without a male companion.
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Mr Egeland also said he had raised the issue of denying women education beyond primary school during his Kandahar meeting. The Taliban has argued that women cannot be educated or employed until guidelines have been established for female dress and deportment in accordance with the movement’s interpretation of Islamic law. The Taliban barred girls from secondary education in September 2021, shortly after taking power, and prevented women from attending university at the end of last year, the same time the ban on women working for aid agencies was imposed.
Early last month, the Taliban prohibited Afghan women from working for the United Nations, which employs 3,000 people, of whom 400 are women. After several women were harassed and detained for violating the decree, the UN ordered all staff to stay at home for 48 hours for security reasons. Afghan male employees staged a brief strike to support the women.
The UN condemned the ban as “unlawful under international law” and UN special representative Roza Otunbayeva said she had contacted the Taliban to “seek an immediate reversal of the order”.
In an April 22nd mosque address on the feast ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the reclusive Mr Akhundzada said he would not permit foreign interference in Afghanistan and would “forbid any action that threatens or negates Islam and is against Islamic principles.”
Mr Egeland said the NRC was at risk of losing 40 per cent of its funding. “The world has turned its back” on crises other than Ukraine. In addition to Afghanistan, he mentioned Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo where conditions are worse than in Ukraine.
