Aid chief: Taliban decrees against women paralyzing NGO work

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban’s “inside debates and excessive decrees” are paralyzing humanitarian work in Afghanistan, the pinnacle of a significant support company advised The Related Press on Sunday, after he arrived on a week-long journey to speak to Taliban leaders about reversing a ban on girls working for nationwide and worldwide non-governmental teams.

Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, is the primary NGO chief to go to Afghanistan for talks with the Taliban for the reason that ban got here into impact greater than two weeks in the past.

Authorities have barred Afghan girls from working at NGOs, allegedly as a result of they weren’t sporting the Islamic scarf appropriately. The ban follows a slew of strikes which have severely restricted or suspended girls’s rights and schooling.

Support teams, overseas governments, and the United Nations say girls are very important for the supply of lifesaving help in Afghanistan and are calling for the ban’s reversal. Many teams have suspended their operations, warning of dire and lethal penalties for a inhabitants already battered by many years of battle, deteriorating residing situations and financial hardship.

The Norwegian Refugee Council says it has labored in Afghanistan since 2003 and employs 470 girls. It helped greater than 840,000 individuals final yr and was intending to assist 700,000 this yr, the group mentioned.

Egeland mentioned that he was assembly Taliban leaders within the capital of Kabul and within the southern metropolis of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban motion and the bottom of the group’s supreme chief Hibatullah Akhundzada.

Egeland has already met the financial system minister, who initially introduced the ban, and different Taliban officers. Egeland indicated that these in Kabul have been extra prepared to ponder girls returning to work due to their essential position in delivering humanitarian support.

“All of them say that they need us to proceed work and hope we are going to proceed with out females,” Egeland mentioned in an interview Sunday at his group’s Kabul workplace. “However once I say we’re not prepared or in a position to work with males solely, they (Taliban officers) understand that the inhabitants is completely depending on worldwide help in the mean time, meals, shelter, sanitation.”

Girls are wanted to contact girls, together with female-headed households and widows, he mentioned. Support businesses say it’s unattainable for males to do that work due to Afghanistan’s social and cultural norms in addition to the Taliban’s personal prohibitions in opposition to the blending of genders.

Individually, two support officers have advised the AP that they got the impression by Taliban ministers in Kabul that they need girls to renew their work at NGOs however that this choice lies with the management in Kandahar.

Egeland mentioned the financial system minister “despatched us the message given by the supreme chief that we needed to discontinue all work.” He mentioned he’s touring to Kandahar as a result of “it’s there that the ideological and non secular decrees come from.”

“The (Taliban’s) inside debates and excessive decrees have paralyzed our work,” Egeland mentioned.

The NRC chief mentioned it was unattainable to satisfy the supreme chief in Kandahar however hoped to affect these round him.

Two weeks after the ban, it stays unclear how complete it’s, and a few teams have reported that they’re able to proceed their work.

Egeland mentioned this raises additional questions.

“Can this be a religiously activated ban if some (girls) are working and a few usually are not? It’s not thought by in any respect,” Egeland mentioned. “We will’t work with males solely as a result of we are able to’t observe their (the Taliban’s) guidelines and laws.”

The Norwegian support chief mentioned the group’s feminine workers have complied with the Taliban’s gown codes, gender segregation guidelines and even the necessity to have a male chaperone on sure events. The injury attributable to the ban will turn out to be worse the longer it continues, he warned, saying malnutrition and dying is rising and maternal well being is plunging.

On his journey, Egeland can be attributable to meet officers from embassies of Muslim-majority nations, similar to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who retain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and have condemned the Taliban crackdowns on feminine schooling and employment.

Regardless of initially promising a extra average rule, the Taliban have broadly applied their interpretation of Islamic legislation, or Sharia.

They’ve banned women and girls from center faculty, highschool, and college, restricted girls from most employment and ordered them to put on head-to-toe clothes in public. Girls are additionally banned from parks and gymnasiums.

Egeland mentioned he was in Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

“All these guarantees have been made. We have been misled. What I might say is that the Taliban decrees on feminine employees, on schooling for ladies is so mistaken for Afghanistan, for the inhabitants, for the long run, for the financial system.”

He urged the West to ship their diplomats again to Afghanistan to interact with the nation’s new rulers as a result of the inhabitants have been the “similar 40 million residents they left behind.”