The Group of Seven (G7) on Thursday (December 29) told the Taliban to ‘urgently reverse’ the ban on women aid workers in Afghanistan. Issuing a joint statement, the G7 foreign ministers said they are gravely concerned that the Taliban’s reckless and dangerous order barring female employees of national and international NGOs from the workplace puts at risk millions of Afghans who depend on humanitarian assistance for their survival, news agency AFP reported.
The G7 pointed out that women are absolutely central to humanitarian and basic needs operations.
“Unless they participate in aid delivery in Afghanistan, NGOs will be unable to reach the country’s most vulnerable people to provide food, medicine, winterization, and other materials and services they need to live,” the Thursday’s statement added.
The group also said that the Taliban continued to demonstrate their contempt for the rights, freedoms and welfare of the people of Afghanistan, particularly women and girls.
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The ban on women aid workers in Afghanistan comes days after the Taliban barred women from attending universities in the country. The Taliban said the move to ban women aid workers was justified because some of them had not adhered to the group’s interpretation of the Islamic dress code for women.
The above decisions of the Taliban on women have been condemned globally.
Before the G7, the United Nations had urged the Taliban to reverse the ban on women aid workers. “Millions of Afghans need humanitarian assistance and removing barriers is vital,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said on Monday, news agency Reuters reported.
On Wednesday, the UN said that some “time-critical” programmes in Afghanistan were temporarily stopped due to a lack of female staff. “Banning women from humanitarian work has immediate life-threatening consequences for all Afghans. Already, some time-critical programmes have had to stop temporarily due to lack of female staff,” a joint statement read.
(With inputs from agencies)
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