The United Nations (UN) is ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to pull out of Afghanistan in May if it can’t persuade the Taliban to let local women work for the organization, the head of the UN Development Program said.
UN officials are negotiating with the Afghan Government in the hope that it will make exceptions to an edict this month barring local women from UN work, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner told The Associated Press.
UNDP Administrator, Achin Steiner, said, according to Khaama Press, “It is fair to say that where we are right now is the entire United Nations system having to take a step back and re-evaluate its ability to operate there. But it is not about negotiating fundamental principles, human rights.”
“I think there is no other way of putting it than heartbreaking,” Mr Steiner said in an April 17th’s interview. “I mean, if I were to imagine the UN family not being in Afghanistan today, I have before me these images of millions of young girls, young boys, fathers, mothers, who essentially will not have enough to eat.”
Expressing “serious concerns”, the UN has condemned Taliban’s ban on Afghan female UN staff members from reporting to work. “The United Nations in Afghanistan expresses serious concern that female national UN staff have been prevented from reporting to work in Nangarhar province,” the UN had then said, adding that life-saving aid in the country would be at risk without female staff.
It has been claimed that the Taliban has officially allowed women to work in specific circumstances in health, education and some small businesses. But reports from Afghanistan show otherwise.
In January 2023, shortly after, the Taliban banned women from attending universities. How Afghanistan’s women doctors were denied jobs in Kabul’s private clinics due to fear of Taliban’s tyranny.
The Taliban first prevented girls from continuing their education past the sixth grade; in December 2022, a decree prohibited Afghan women from pursuing higher education or working with national and international non-governmental organisations.
“In one sense, the de facto authorities have enabled the UN to roll out a significant humanitarian and also emergency development assistance set of activities,” Steiner said. “But they also continuously are shifting the goalposts, issuing new edicts.”
Since replacing the democratically-elected President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul’s corridors of power, Taliban have imposed harsh measures to restrict women’s rights to study and work.
Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product, the sum of all goods and services produced within Afghanistan’s borders, is expected to be outstripped by population growth, meaning that per capita income will decline from $359 in 2022 to $345 in 2024, the UN report says.
Some of Afghanistan’s economic problems are due to Taliban policies keeping most women out of the workplace, Steiner said.
It has been witnessed and reported by several that the oppressive restrictions on women have drawn widespread condemnation from national and international organisations, who fear that they may stymie humanitarian help to Afghanistan’s most vulnerable population.
Various experts have perceived this move as the US, now the UN is also abandoning Afghanistan to its own fate under the orthodox and harsh reign of Taliban.
The UN has decided that it will leave Afghanistan in May if the Taliban do not relent to its demands of letting women work.
