Taliban orders NGOs to send domestic workers | Taliban news

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The Taliban-run Afghan administration has ordered all local and foreign NGOs to prevent female employees from coming to work, according to a letter from the Ministry of Economy, in the latest crackdown on women’s freedoms.

The letter, which was confirmed on Saturday by Economy Ministry spokesman Abdulrahman Habib, said the female employees were not allowed to work until further notice because some of them did not adhere to the administration’s interpretation of the Islamic dress code for women.

The letter said that any NGO found not to comply with the order would have its operating license in Afghanistan revoked.

The order came days after the Taliban-run administration ordered universities to close in on women, drawing strong global condemnation and sparking some protests and harsh criticism inside Afghanistan.

It was not immediately clear how the order would affect the United Nations agencies, which have a large presence in Afghanistan to provide services amid the humanitarian crisis in the country.

Asked if the rules extended to UN agencies, Habib said the letter applied to organizations affiliated with the Afghan Coordination Body for Humanitarian Organisations, known as Akbar. This body does not include the United Nations but includes more than 180 local and international NGOs.

However, the UN often contracts with NGOs registered in Afghanistan to carry out their humanitarian work.

Ramiz Alekperov, the UN’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and humanitarian coordinator, said he was “deeply concerned” by the reports in the letter, which were “a clear violation of humanitarian principles”.

He told Reuters news agency that contracted NGOs carried out most of the UN’s activities and that their work would be severely affected.

“Many of our programs will be affected,” he said, because they need female staff to assess humanitarian needs and identify beneficiaries, otherwise they will not be able to implement aid programmes.

The potential danger to aid programs reaching millions of Afghans comes when more than half the population depends on humanitarian aid, according to aid agencies, and during the coldest season in the mountainous country.

Alekperov said, “There is never a good time for anything like this… But this particular time is very unfortunate because during the winter people need it the most and the Afghan winter is very harsh.”

He said his office would consult with NGOs and UN agencies on Sunday and seek to meet with Taliban authorities for an explanation.

AIIA said it had immediately suspended operations while it consulted with other organizations, and that other NGOs were taking similar action.

The ban drew condemnation from the United States and donor groups.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter that he was “deeply concerned” that the move would “disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions.”

“Women are at the center of humanitarian operations around the world. This decision could be devastating for the Afghan people.”

The chargé d’affaires of Norway, which funds aid in Afghanistan and hosted talks between the Taliban and members of civil society in January, called for the embargo to be “rescinded immediately”.

“In addition to being a blow to women’s rights, this move will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and hurt the most vulnerable Afghans,” Paul Kloman Pekin tweeted.

Meanwhile, the European Union said it was assessing the impact on its aid to the country.

“The European Union strongly condemns the Taliban’s recent decision to ban women from working in national and international non-governmental organisations,” Josep Borrell, spokeswoman for the European Union’s foreign policy chief, told AFP in a statement.

Education is our right

The Economy Ministry’s move came as Taliban security forces used water cannons to disperse a crowd protesting a ban on university education for women on Saturday, witnesses said in the western city of Herat.

After the announcement on Tuesday, Afghan women demonstrated in major cities against the ban, in a rare sign of domestic protest since the Taliban seized power last year.

In Herat, eyewitnesses said that on Saturday about two dozen women went to the governor’s home to protest the ban, chanting “Education is our right,” when security forces stopped them by firing water cannons.

Maryam, one of the protest organizers, said between 100 and 150 women took part in the protest, moving in small groups from different parts of the city towards a central meeting point. She did not give her last name for fear of reprisals.

“There was security on every street, in every square, armored vehicles and armed men,” she said.

When we started our protest, in Tariq’s garden, the two students took branches from trees and beat us. But we continued our protest. They increased their security presence. Around 11 am [06:30 GMT]Bring the water hoses.”

The spokesman for the governorate’s governor, Hamidullah Mutawakkil, claimed that there were only four or five demonstrators. “They didn’t have an agenda,” he said, “they just came here to shoot a movie.”

There was widespread international condemnation of the university ban, including from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as warnings from the United States and the Group of Seven major industrialized nations that the policy would have consequences for the Taliban.

An official in the Taliban government, Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim, spoke about the ban for the first time on Thursday in an interview with Afghan state television. He said the ban was necessary to prevent mixing of the sexes in universities and because he believed that some of the subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam.

He said the ban is in effect until further notice.

Despite initially promising more moderate governance that respects the rights of women and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their interpretation of Islamic law since seizing power in August 2021.

He also placed a ban on women in most areas of work, ordering them to be dressed from head to toe in public, and banning them from entering parks and gyms.

Also on Saturday, in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta, dozens of refugee Afghan students protested the ban on female higher education in their home country and demanded the immediate reopening of campuses for women.

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