The UN humanitarian chief warned Monday that the Taliban's ban on women aid workers in Afghanistan is “a potential death blow” to many important humanitarian programmes.
If the Taliban don't make exceptions to their edict “this would be catastrophic,” Martin Griffiths said at a news conference.
He said a delegation including international aid groups made the case that Afghan women are critical to humanitarian operations during meetings last week with nine Taliban officials, including Afghanistan's foreign affairs and economy ministers.
“We were asked to be patient,” Griffiths said. “We were told that guidelines are being developed by the Taliban authorities which would provide, allegedly, the functioning of women in humanitarian operations.”
He said the Taliban's consistent message “that there will be a place for women working” was “a slightly patronizing message, but it's an important one.”
Griffiths noted that after the Dec. 24 edict by the Taliban barring aid groups from employing Afghan women, the health minister granted an exception for women in the health field and the education minister granted an exception for those involved in primary education.
He said the humanitarian delegation told the Taliban that if they weren't going to rescind the edict “then we must expand these exceptions to cover all the aspects of humanitarian action.”