Iran Press/ America: The council then went into a closed meeting to discuss the Taliban’s latest ban on women working for humanitarian groups, a move that is exacerbating the already critical humanitarian crisis in the country.
The joint statement from 11 of the 15 council members said female aid workers are crucial to addressing Afghanistan’s “dire humanitarian situation” because they provide “critical life-saving support to women and girls” that men can’t reach. It reiterated the council’s demand for “unhindered access for humanitarian actors regardless of gender.”
Japanese Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane, the current council president, delivered the statement to reporters surrounded by diplomats from the 10 other countries -- Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Malta, Switzerland, Britain, United States, and the United Arab Emirates, which called the meeting.
The 11 council members also urged the immediate reversal of the Taliban’s ban on girls attending secondary school and girls and women attending university as well as restrictions on women’s human rights and freedoms.
In another prepared briefing, also obtained by AP, Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said the decree banning women from working for NGOs “is both wrong and dangerous” and “stands to deepen the country’s devastating humanitarian crisis.”
She said UNICEF projects that this year 13.5 million Afghan children will need humanitarian assistance and 20 million Afghans will be at crisis or emergency levels of needing food by March, including “upwards of 875,000 severely wasted children under 5.”
Russell said that “Afghan women are a critical part of the solution to the country’s humanitarian and socio-economic crisis” and “it is not hyperbole to say without them, lives will be lost, children will die.”
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