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Afghanistan: Humanitarians await guidelines on women’s role in aid operations

A UN-led group of humanitarians are hoping that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) will allow Afghan women to again work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground following last month’s ban, four senior aid officials told journalists in New York on Monday.
In a statement issued by the UN, the group, representing the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), stressed that the world’s largest humanitarian operation – supporting some 28 million people in Afghanistan – simply cannot function without women staff.
The officials reported on their mission to the country last week, in the wake of the edict prohibiting Afghan women from working with local and international aid agencies, announced on 24 December.
Days later, the IEA authorized women to continue working in healthcare.
A similar exception was made in education, though focused on the primary level as Afghan girls and women have been barred from attending high school and university.
In their meetings with the IEA, the IASC mission expressed opposition to the ban, which they hoped would be rescinded, and advocated for exemptions in all aspects of humanitarian action.
They were told that guidelines are being developed, and were asked to be patient, said Martin Griffiths, UN relief chief and the IASC chair, speaking during a press conference at UN Headquarters.
“I’m somebody who doesn’t like to speculate too much, because it is a matter of speculation. Let’s see if these guidelines do come through. Let’s see if they are beneficial. Let’s see what space there is for the essential and central role of women in our humanitarian operations,” he said.
“Everybody has opinions as to whether it’s going to work or not. Our view is that the message has clearly been delivered: that women are central, essential workers in the humanitarian sector, in addition to having rights, and we need to see them back to work.”
The UN says humanitarians will require $4.6 billion to fund their activities in Afghanistan this year.
Three years of drought-like conditions, economic decline, and the impacts of four decades of conflict, have left roughly two-thirds of the population, 28 million people, dependent on aid, with six million on the brink of starvation.
Women comprise 30 percent of the 55,000 Afghan nationals working for NGOs in the country, according to Janti Soeripto, President and Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children.
“Without women on our teams, we cannot provide humanitarian services to millions of children and women,” she said.
“We won’t be able to identify their needs; communicate to female heads of households, of which there are many in Afghanistan after years and years of conflict, and to do so in a safe and culturally appropriate way.”
The UN stated that furthermore, many women aid workers are themselves the sole breadwinners for their families, which means many more households will go wanting.
“We’ve made it very clear that humanitarian aid must never be conditional, and it cannot discriminate,” said Soeripto. “We were not there to politicize aid. We cannot do this work without women in all aspects of our value chains.”
The loss of these valuable workers also comes as Afghanistan is facing its coldest winter in 15 years, with temperatures falling to nearly -30 degrees Celsius, resulting in numerous deaths.
The IASC mission visited a clinic on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, run by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and a local partner.
Critical health and nutrition services there are up and running again now that women staff are back on board, said Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro, Secretary General of CARE International.
The clinic’s staff also shared a horrific statistic, as 15 percent of the children who seek help suffer from severe acute malnutrition, the UN stated.
“So, let there be no ambiguity. Tying the hands of NGOs by barring women from giving life-saving support to other women will cost lives,” Sineiro said, speaking from Kabul.
According to the statement, during their meetings with the IEA, the humanitarian chiefs also pushed for the full inclusion of girls and women in public life.
More than one million Afghan girls have lost out on learning due to the order banning them from secondary school, which has added to losses sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The university ban, announced last month, has further crushed their hopes, said Omar Abdi, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director for Programmes.
“We are very concerned about girls’ and women’s development and particularly their mental health. In 2023, if secondary school education remains closed, an estimated 215,000 girls who attended grade six last year will once again be denied the right to learn,” he said.
Despite the bleak outlook, Abdi pointed to a few positive signs.
Since the ban, some 200,000 girls continue to attend secondary schools in 12 provinces, and women secondary school teachers continue to receive their salaries.
“The officials we met in Kabul…reaffirmed that they are not against girls learning in secondary schools, and again promised to re-open once the guidelines are approved by their leader,” he said.
Meanwhile, the number of community-based education classes in private homes and other locations has doubled to 20,000 over the past year, serving some 600,000 children, more than half of them girls.
“These positive signs are the results of both the commitment from the de facto authorities (IEA) and pressure from local communities to keep schools and community schools open,” said Abdi.
“As long as communities continue to demand education, we must continue to support both public and other forms of education, community-based classrooms, catch-up classes and vocational training.”
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Lebanon and Afghanistan named unhappiest countries in the world

According to the annual World Happiness Report, Afghanistan (ranked 137) and Lebanon (ranked 136) are the two unhappiest countries.
The report includes six key factors to help explain variation in happiness levels, namely social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and absence of corruption.
According to the survey, Finland remained in the top position for the sixth year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Israel, and the Netherlands. In contrast, Afghanistan and Lebanon remained the unhappiest countries, preceded by Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Congo.
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1401 In Review: Diplomacy a focal point for Afghanistan

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has made extensive efforts on the diplomatic front to open a new chapter in political relations with the world in the past 12 months.
Although these efforts have not yet led to any country officially recognizing the IEA government, the Islamic Emirate’s flag has been raised at a few foreign missions in the region.
Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have allowed the IEA to post its diplomats to the embassies of Afghanistan.
The messages of almost all of Afghanistan’s neighbors, except for Tajikistan, in the field of fighting terrorism, human rights and sovereignty, have been comprehensive, which have been described as largely aligned with the interests of the United States.
In the past twelve months, the political representations of European countries in Afghanistan have continued to operate only for the purpose of coordinating humanitarian aid.
India meanwhile also has a technical team to coordinate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has said that the Islamic Emirate respects the interests of other countries and in return asks them to have similar interactions with the IEA.
This goal has been expressed many times by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Deputy Prime Minister of Economy. He has said the IEA has a balanced and economy-oriented foreign policy and wants to have friendly relations with all the countries of the world.
Over the past 12 months, the countries of the region and the world also hosted meetings for Afghanistan, but almost no representative of the Islamic Emirate was present at most of these gatherings.
At the joint meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Tashkent at the end of this solar year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan suggested the establishment of an international negotiating group to carry on negotiations with the IEA.
Russian President’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov also made similar statements and emphasized that Afghanistan should not be in political isolation on the world stage.
Questions have however been raised as to why the world, especially the US and Western countries, did not have a clear and specific strategy for Afghanistan in the past year, and why countries did not deal with Afghanistan through multilateral diplomacy.
“Some of our neighboring countries have interactions based on their own interests in the framework of “de facto” relations, the countries of the world wanted to interact at the beginning, and according to one of the ambassadors of the European countries, the world’s interaction with the Taliban (Islamic Emirate) is going in a negative way,” said Aziz Bariz, an international relations analyst.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate hopes that in the new solar year, it will be able to further strengthen its relations and political ties with the countries of the region and the world, and as a result, achieve positive interactions with the world and establish friendly relations with international legitimacy.
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IEA’s supreme leader orders torching of drugs

In a new decree, the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered all drugs and drug paraphernalia to be burned, according to a statement published by the Administrative Office.
Based on the decree, the drug dealers and producers will be punished and the tools and equipment used in the production of drugs should be destroyed.
According to the decree, the joint board of the Ministries of Interior and Public Health and the Directorate of General Intelligence has been tasked with burning drugs and equipment used in drug production in public in the presence of the relevant court.
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