The Afghan government on Saturday barred women from working in local and international humanitarian organizations in the country, officials said, a move that threatens billions of dollars of aid that has kept the country from the brink of starvation amid an economic collapse.
The decision offers the latest blow to women’s rights under a Taliban administration that appears to value eradicating women from public life over keeping the country from plunging further into a dire humanitarian catastrophe that risks the lives of millions of Afghans.
The move against aid organizations, announced in a letter from the Ministry of Economy and confirmed to The New York Times by the ministry’s spokesman, warned that the ministry would revoke the operating licenses of any organizations that did not comply. It was unclear whether the edict would apply to the United Nations’ aid agencies.
Since the Western-backed government collapsed last year and the country’s economy crashed practically overnight, Afghanistan’s longstanding malnutrition crisis drastically worsened: Across the country, millions of Afghans lost their jobs, the prices of food soared beyond many families’ reach and emaciated children flooded malnutrition clinics.
Today, nearly 20 million people — more than half of the population — are facing potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to an analysis by the United Nations. Of those, six million people are nearing famine, the worst stage of a food crisis.
Over the past year, billions of dollars in aid from humanitarian groups have kept the country from the brink of mass starvation, providing free food to millions of families that would otherwise go hungry and offering lifesaving medical care to millions of malnourished children.
But the decree barring female staff from aid organizations risks effectively destroying Afghanistan’s aid ecosystem and severing a lifeline for the record 28.3 million Afghans — or two-thirds of the population — expected to need some form of humanitarian assistance next year, aid workers say.
Many humanitarian aid organizations consider the move a red line that could shut down their operations throughout the country, as donors and decision makers balk at the open discrimination against women in their ranks, according to aid workers.
The decision comes less than a week after the Afghan government barred women from attending private and public universities, crushing the hopes of millions of girls who have watched as the rights they grew up with under American occupation have been slowly erased since the Western-backed government collapsed. In March, the new government also reneged on promises to allow girls to attend public high schools.
The edicts further signaled the latest signs that the Taliban’s leadership has cast aside any intent to moderate and is determined to reinstitute the hard-line rule that the group maintained during its first stretch in power, in the 1990s.
Both announcements this week also underscore how ideological hard-liners within the Taliban movement, including its supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, have increasingly imposed their influence over those who have urged moderation in order to maintain engagement with the international community.
Source : Nytimes
