Taliban do not want women in NGOs – and put the helpers in a dilemma Expert: comeback Johnson in 2023 is possible

NGOs helping the hungry and sick in Afghanistan face a difficult choice. If they stop working in protest, they risk people dying because they are deprived of food and medical care. If they continue to work without their female employees, not only will they bow to the Taliban’s contempt for women, they will also be less able to reach girls and women in need.

The Taliban announced on December 24 that they would ban Afghan women from working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) because they had previously banned female students from universities. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has ordered the ban on all domestic and foreign NGOs and threatens to have the organizations revoked if they fail to comply.

In response, many of the 183 organizations have now declared that they are temporarily or at least substantially suspending their work in the country. They demand that the Taliban withdraw the ban.

anger and depression

Welthungerhilfe spokeswoman Simone Pott says her organization’s 44 employees on the ground were all shocked:

But the women are not only concerned with their income. Work is often the only way to get out of the house. “It’s about dignity, pride and self-determination.”

Pott says the employees adhere to religious, cultural and traditional rules, but Welthungerhilfe cannot accept the discrimination of half the population. As a result, many organizations are currently not working. Pott believes it is important that the aid organizations now speak with one voice.

The umbrella organization of NGOs working in Afghanistan, Acbar, has asked the Afghan government to withdraw the order, while at the same time announcing that it will suspend operations. According to the press release, 183 local and international organizations have signed the statement. Together, they say they employ more than 55,000 people in Afghanistan, 28 percent of whom are women.

If the NGOs withdraw now, it will have dramatic consequences. According to the UN, more than half of Afghanistan’s 38 million people depend on aid. The country’s economic crisis has worsened since the Taliban came to power in August last year. An estimated three million children under the age of five are malnourished.

According to Welthungerhilfe alone, it reached about 500,000 people in Afghanistan this year. On the one hand by training farmers in better cultivation methods and by repairing irrigation systems. On the other hand, through direct food supply. The workers also distributed packages of health items to women, such as sanitary towels and soap.

Are the aid organizations now violating their actual humanitarian mission if they do not continue to work in Afghanistan? Welthungerhilfe spokeswoman Pott says the decision is not just about principle – without the work of the women on the ground many things would be impossible:

It is even more dramatic with those aid organizations that are active in the medical field. There, the proportion of women among the employees is much higher and they are indispensable to come into contact with sick women at all.

The Caritas office manager in Kabul, Stefan Recker, said on Südwestrundfunk (SWR) that hopefully a compromise can be reached. “The reason given by the Taliban was that the rules on dress and gender segregation were not enforced in the offices of various aid organizations. We will probably have to promise the Taliban something. Then it will continue,” he says.

German politicians are showing support for the NGOs’ decision. “We will not accept that the Taliban make humanitarian aid a pawn in their contempt for women,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on Twitter. Germany will work “for a clear response from the international community”. Federal Minister for Development Cooperation Schulze advocates suspending aid to Afghanistan for the time being.

With a view to a “completely new situation”, her ministry wanted to invite people together with the World Bank to discuss how to proceed with the reconstruction fund for Afghanistan (ARTF). The fund is managed by the World Bank and finances, for example, parts of health care and education.

Now on

Now there are the first signs that the Taliban might give in a little. The dpa news agency has the minutes of a meeting between the Taliban’s economy minister, Din Mohammed Hanif, and the acting head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov. It states that women employees of the United Nations and foreign NGO workers are exempt from the work ban, as are all women who work in the health sector. But that would not be of much use to Welthungerhilfe. Due to their language skills, the local employees could not simply be replaced by foreign ones.

With material from dpa and KNA

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.