Daily Times

The United Nations said on Wednesday that some “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan have temporarily stopped and warned many other activities will also likely need to be paused because of a ban by the Taliban-led administration on women aid workers. UN aid chief Martin Griffiths, the heads of UN agencies and several aid groups said in a joint statement that women’s “participation in aid delivery is not negotiable and must continue,” calling on the authorities to reverse the decision. “Banning women from humanitarian work has immediate life-threatening consequences for all Afghans. Already, some time-critical programmes have had to stop temporarily due to lack of female staff,” read the statement. “We cannot ignore the operational constraints now facing us as a humanitarian community,” it said. “We will endeavour to continue lifesaving, time-critical activities … But we foresee that many activities will need to be paused as we cannot deliver principled humanitarian assistance without female aid workers.” The ban on female aid workers was announced by the Islamist Taliban-led administration on Saturday. It follows a ban imposed last week on women attending universities. Girls were stopped from attending high school in March. “No country can afford to exclude half of its population from contributing to society,” said the statement, which was also signed by the heads of UNICEF, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, the UN Development Programme, and the UN high commissioners for refugees and human rights.