Why this humanitarian NGO leader flew to Kabul to meet with the Taliban | CBC Radio

Without girls employees, there might be no humanitarian help in Afghanistan, says Jan Egeland.

Egeland is the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental group (NGO) that advocates for displaced folks and offers training, meals help, clear water, authorized assist and extra.

But he says the group will not be capable of provide its companies in Afghanistan after the Taliban issued a decree barring girls from working for home or worldwide NGOs.

That’s why Egeland simply spent every week in Kabul, assembly with Taliban officers and urgent them to reverse the decree. He is the primary NGO chief to go to Afghanistan for talks with the Taliban because the ban got here into impact greater than two weeks in the past.

He spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal about these talks, and why he nonetheless has hope for the long run. Here is a part of their dialog.

Have you made any headway in your talks with the Taliban up to now?

We have not less than been capable of meet the Taliban on the highest ranges right here in Kabul. And we have been extraordinarily blunt. We informed the Taliban management that they’ve compelled us to finish all work briefly throughout Afghanistan as a result of they’ve banned all our feminine employees.

We can not work with out our feminine colleagues. We is not going to work with out them. So that is an existential disaster for humanitarian work in a rustic the place 23 million — greater than half of the inhabitants — is in dire want of humanitarian help.

What did the Taliban management say in response?

The paradoxical factor is, after all, that they are saying to me that they agree with me. There must be training for ladies and women. There must be no ban on feminine humanitarian employees or employees in non-governmental organizations. They agree with me that they broke, as a corporation, their guarantees to us.

But this can be a decree coming from their supreme management in Kandahar, which is now siding with the extra excessive corners of the Taliban which are wanting to return to these bleak days of the Nineties.

So the place does this go away you now? Are they going to take your message again to the even greater ranges? Is there any hope?

There is totally hope. I hear repeatedly that there’s work on a [new] decree. The [most recent] decree mainly got here on Christmas Eve … banning all the feminine employees. Before that, there was the decree on banning training [at the] secondary and tertiary college degree.

[I am told] there shall be a brand new decree discovering an answer to these issues, which might imply we will nonetheless have our feminine colleagues and even do training on the degree that we wish to.

The essential difficulty is when will this come? I hope subsequent week. But it might additionally take a yr. And what is going to then occur in that yr? 

I do know you are having different conversations with ambassadors from different international locations. You’ve simply emerged from a gathering with United Nations representatives. Can you inform me what you have been discussing there, and if these different conversations may also help you get to the place it is advisable to be?

I’m making some extent now of making an attempt to succeed in Kandahar, the place the management sits. 

The Qatari embassy and the Turkish embassy have promised to assist. They are well-connected in Afghanistan.

The UN is of 1 thoughts with us within the non-governmental organizations in opposition to this. The ban has not up to now … affected them. It might sooner or later.

I hope to see a united entrance from the worldwide neighborhood saying we can not and we is not going to work with out feminine colleagues. 

One of the explanations for that’s, after all, that males can not give direct help to females. That is in response to Afghan traditions, lengthy earlier than the Taliban, which signifies that widows, single moms, et cetera, will now be excluded. 

For us, it is a basic worth, which I’ve defined to the Taliban, that we’ve got equality between the 2 sexes.

Do you suppose it is possible for you to to go to the management in Kandahar?

I’m making an attempt to…. We have lined up conferences with the Islamic management in Kandahar, the place I shall be equally blunt, equal to what I’ve been right here in Kabul.

We need to win this. It’s a battle of values. We need to win it.

You talked about the tens of tens of millions of individuals in Afghanistan and a bit of little bit of what they’re up in opposition to. But might you simply inform me a bit of bit extra about what the day by day actuality is for folks, and the sorts of issues they’re doing … to outlive? 

It’s been steadily worsening, the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. And it is too unhealthy that it comes fully within the shadow of the horrific battle in Europe in Ukraine.

Canada, Norway, [the] U.S. and all the different NATO international locations left Afghanistan. You will keep in mind that the troopers and the event employees and the diplomats went for the door one-and-a-half years in the past and left us, the humanitarians, behind with the civilian inhabitants of 40 million.

Is there any route you see the place you’d get that help to the individuals who want it most, even when this decree is not lifted? 

If it is not lifted, I can not see how we will do principled, efficient, environment friendly, monitored humanitarian work. So we are going to head into an amazing disaster.

Which means, once more, that I consider there shall be a reversal of this. There shall be a brand new decree that may allow our work. 

We’re working very laborious on that. We need assistance, although. So I hope extra international locations will have interaction, extra international locations will push. Islamic international locations ought to push. Neighbouring international locations ought to push.

The girls and kids of Afghanistan deserve all the assistance they will get. Now, six million could fall into famine very quickly. Twenty million folks want meals help. There are a number of million internally displaced. Still, there are massive communities with no roof within the chilly and the snow and the rain of the winter in Afghanistan’s mountains.

It could not be bleaker actually. But we’re not giving up. 

We’ve heard some stories of among the excessive measures folks need to take there to outlive inside their households. Can you inform us something about these sorts of issues?

Extreme measures, certainly. There is extra baby marriage, [more] baby brides. There is extra human trafficking. There is extra medicine. And an increasing number of households develop into closely indebted as a result of they can not afford life anymore. They should not have an revenue they usually develop into indebted to others, which implies ruins for the household for a very long time to return.

I’ve argued for the property of the Afghan National Bank which are frozen in Washington and elsewhere to be launched. Of course, that also needs to include the situation that women can have training and that females can work in our organizations. 

But we would definitely have extra leverage if the West selected to interact once more and never simply sit within the distance on a fence.

But does the management of the Taliban in Kandahar … actually care what neighbouring international locations and what Western international locations say at this level?

I do not know what the closest advisers to the emir and himself [think]. Nobody is aware of. But there may be, after all, a variety of Taliban leaders which are acutely conscious that they’re in management now. They govern greater than 40 million folks. They don’t wish to see their folks — their households, their family, their moms and grandmothers and aunts and nephews — perish.

There is, at present, an infinite stress throughout the Taliban for a extra rational and fewer excessive coverage. 

With information from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A edited for size and readability.