About 85% of the U.N. staff in Afghanistan are being told to stay at home due to the Taliban's illegal prohibition against female Afghan aid workers.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said on Tuesday it told 3,300 national staff, women and men, not to report to U.N. offices, with "only limited and calibrated exceptions made for critical tasks."
UNAMA employs another 600 international personnel in Afghanistan.
The United Nations and other international organizations have strongly condemned the decision by Afghanistan’s de facto authorities to ban women from working in humanitarian nongovernmental organizations.
"It is the latest in a series of discriminatory measures implemented by the Taliban de facto authorities with the goal of severely restricting women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan," UNAMA said.
"The ban is unlawful under international law, including the U.N. Charter, and for that reason the United Nations cannot comply," it said. "It should be clear that any negative consequences of this crisis for the Afghan people will be the responsibility of the de facto authorities."
The head of UNAMA, Roza Otunbayeva, a former president of Kyrgyzstan, is conducting an operational review of the situation through early May, resulting in what the U.N. called needed adjustments and accelerated contingency planning.
About 800 women – 600 Afghan women and 200 women from other nations – are part of the U.N.'s 3,900 staff in Afghanistan.
Funding for the Afghanistan appeal is drying up putting millions of lives at risk. Already, the food basket has had to be cut to half due to insufficient resources. If funding is not urgently secured, millions of Afghans will be staring down the barrel of famine, disease & death. pic.twitter.com/nO0TKFFQsl
— OCHA Afghanistan (@OCHAAfg) April 12, 2023
Donors turning away
Since the Taliban's return to power in 2021, it took a series of steps to restrict women's freedoms after claiming it would honor some of them.
Now, Afghanistan is "rapidly moving towards a cliff edge" due to severe under-funding and bans on female aid workers that disable aid delivery, says the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
Afghanistan, the world's largest aid operation, needs US$4.6 billion to provide 28.3 million people with life-saving assistance, OCHA says, but its appeal is less than 5% funded – the least well-resourced operation globally.
Yet 6 million Afghans are a step away from famine, and 20 million others face severe hunger.
“The world cannot abandon the people of Afghanistan at this precarious moment,” said Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N.'s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.
“While we continue to engage with the Taliban de facto authorities to find a solution to these decrees," he said, "we urge the international community not to punish the Afghan people further by withholding critical funding."
