The United Nations aid chief has said the humanitarian community was speaking with Taliban officials to try and gain further exemptions and written guidelines to allow some female aid workers to operate in Afghanistan despite a ban on women NGO staff.
It was the second UN-led delegation that came to Afghanistan this month to urge the Taliban government to reverse two recent decrees that have severely restricted women’s rights, which include banning women from working in NGOs and being barred from university education.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, promised that when it comes to delivering aid in the poverty-stricken country, the global humanitarian community will insist on deploying women workers. Getting more exemptions for women to work across all humanitarian sectors was an important task at this stage. “We don’t have time. The winter is with us, people are dying, famine is looming,” he said.
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