Taliban's decision to ban women from working for both international as well as local non-governmental organizations (NGO) led several foreign aid groups to suspend operations in Afghanistan on Sunday.
Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE, said they cannot effectively reach children, women and men in desperate need in Afghanistan without the women in their workforces. The NGO ban was introduced a day earlier, allegedly because women weren’t wearing the Islamic headscarf correctly.
“We have complied with all cultural norms and we simply can’t work without our dedicated female staff, who are essential for us to access women who are in desperate need of assistance,” Neil Turner, The Norwegian Refugee Council’s chief for Afghanistan, told The Associated Press on Sunday. He said the group has 468 female staff in the country.
The developments came in response to the Taliban’s latest edict that curtails the rights and freedoms of women since they seized power last year.
Taliban bans women from working in NGOs
Just a day earlier, the Taliban government ordered all foreign and domestic non-governmental groups in Afghanistan to suspend employing women, allegedly because some female employees didn't wear the Islamic headscarf correctly.
ALSO READ | Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from working for domestic, foreign NGOs
They also separately banned women from attending religious classes at the mosques in the capital of Kabul. The bans are the latest restrictive moves by Afghanistan's new rulers against women's rights and freedoms, coming just days after the Taliban banned female students from attending universities across the country.
Taliban bans women from educational institutions
Before this, the Taliban authorities had banned education for girls in universities till further orders, AFP reported citing the Afghanistan Ministry of Higher Education. The authorities issued an order to all government and private universities in Afghanistan to suspend 'education of females' until further notice, reports said.
Women are banned from private and public universities in Afghanistan with immediate effect and until further notice, a Taliban government spokesman said Tuesday, the latest edict cracking down on their rights and freedoms. The decision was announced after a meeting of the Taliban government. They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.
(With inputs from AP)
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