UN tells Afghan staff to stay home amid expected Taliban ban on women workers – National | 24CA News
The United Nations advised some 3,300 Afghan employees to not come to work in Afghanistan for the subsequent two days after the Taliban authorities signaled on Tuesday that they might implement a ban on Afghan girls working for the world physique.
U.N. officers in Afghanistan “received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the United Nations from working,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric advised reporters in New York.
The U.N. is wanting into impacts and will meet with Afghan overseas ministry officers in Kabul on Wednesday to hunt additional readability, he mentioned. About 400 Afghan girls work for the U.N.
Two U.N. sources advised Reuters that issues over enforcement had prompted the group to ask all employees – female and male – to not come to work for 48 hours. Friday and Saturday are usually weekend days in Afghanistan, which means U.N. employees wouldn’t return till Sunday on the earliest.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) earlier on Tuesday expressed concern that feminine employees within the japanese province of Nangarhar had been stopped from reporting to work.
“There was a much more official communication made in (Nangarhar provincial capital) Jalalabad. We were told through various conduits that this applied to the whole country,” Dujarric, including there was nothing writing.
“Female staff members are essential for the United Nations to deliver life-saving assistance,” he mentioned, including that some 23 million folks – greater than half Afghanistan’s inhabitants – want humanitarian help.
The Taliban administration and the Afghan data ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the ban enforcement in Nangarhar, posting on Twitter: “If this measure is not reversed, it will inevitably undermine our ability to deliver life-saving aid to the people who need it.”
The Taliban administration, which seized energy as U.S.-led forces withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of struggle, says it respects girls’s rights in accordance with its strict interpretation of Islamic legislation.
Since toppling the Western-backed authorities in Kabul, the Taliban have tightened controls over girls’s entry to public life, together with barring girls from college and shutting most women’ excessive colleges.
In December, Taliban authorities stopped most feminine humanitarian help staff from working, which help employees say has made it tougher to achieve girls in want and could lead on donors to maintain again funding.
The restrictions didn’t initially apply to the U.N. and another worldwide organizations. In January, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed flagged issues that authorities might subsequent prohibit Afghan girls working at worldwide organizations.
It was not instantly clear whether or not overseas embassies in Kabul had acquired related directions on feminine employees.
A ban on Afghan feminine U.N. employees might pose main challenges to continued U.N. operations in Afghanistan. The founding U.N. Charter states that no restrictions be positioned on the eligibility of women and men to work for the U.N.
Aid officers have additionally flagged the danger that donor international locations will scale back funding because of frustration over restrictions on girls as different worldwide crises take maintain.
The U.N. has made its single-largest nation help attraction ever, asking for $4.6 billion in 2023 to ship help in Afghanistan. So far it’s lower than 5% funded.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Michelle Nichols; modifying by Frank Jack Daniel, Mark Heinrich and Josie Kao)
