Top official blasts Taliban ban on female Afghan UN staff

UNITED NATIONS: A top UN official has condemned the Taliban’s decision to ban Afghan women from working with the world body in Afghanistan.

“We stand in full solidarity with our colleagues, and all women who every day put their lives at risk to serve their country and we salute their dedication, professionalism, and bravery. We re-assert their inalienable, fundamental human rights as enshrined in the UN Charter,” Sima Bahous, UN Undersecretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, said in a statement.

“We will not replace our female workforce with men,” she said, adding that UN Women is determined to continue in every way possible to deliver vital services and support, so no woman or girl will be left out or left behind, Xinhua news agency reported.

Afghanistan is in a humanitarian crisis with 28.3 million people, two-thirds of the population, needing humanitarian assistance to survive. Nearly a quarter of households in Afghanistan are female-headed, she noted.

The removal of skilled women aid workers decreases access by women and girls to critical life-saving services, and increases their risks when they have to seek assistance from men instead, said Bahous.

The de-facto authorities’ denial of women’s and girls’ rights to education and to engagement in society and the economy of Afghanistan is a self-inflicted wound on the country. This damage to future recovery and resilience deepens with every woman and girl whose horizons have been forcibly shrunk to her home’s four walls, she added.

UN Women joins UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in calling on the Taliban to immediately revoke this latest decision and reverse all measures that restrict women’s and girls’ rights to work, education and freedom of movement, she said.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Wednesday that the world body is instructing all its Afghan national staff — men and women — not to report to the office for now. In addition, UN national female staff in Afghanistan will not see their posts to be backfilled by men.

Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Secretary-General’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan, said the Afghan UN national staff — Afghan men and women — are in solidarity.

“We will not have a situation where we are going to work with all-men teams. So our national staff will report to the office together,” he told a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York through a video link.

Alakbarov said the United Nations is working to create the normal conditions so that the Afghan UN national staff could return to work. He said everybody will be paid even when they have to stay home.

The United Nations has about 3,900 staff in Afghanistan, nearly 3,300 of them are nationals. Of those, there are about 400 women nationals and 200 women internationals. (IANS)

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