Approximately 28 million people in Afghanistan, or two-thirds of the population, require assistance from the United Nations in 2023, so the UN has made its largest single-country aid appeal ever, asking for $4.6 billion.
However, she warned the UN Security Council that the safety of the aid workers was in jeopardy due to the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s access to higher education, public parks, and the ability to work with international aid organizations. Women must also cover their faces when outside the house and cannot leave the house without a male relative.
Otunbayeva warned that if women were not allowed to work, funding for Afghanistan would likely decrease. In order to reduce the amount of US dollar cash shipments needed to support the reduced assistance, it is necessary to reduce the amount of assistance.
She claimed that the bans had halted talks about increasing development-style assistance for things like small infrastructure projects and policies to combat the effects of climate change.
With over $1 billion contributed, the United States dominated UN aid to Afghanistan in 2022. Ned Price, a spokesman for the US Department of State, responded to questions about potential cuts by saying that the US was considering the consequences of the bans on aid deliveries and consulting with the UN.
U.S. Representative Tom Price said that Washington “wants to make sure the Taliban is under no illusions that they can have it both ways” by not holding them to the promises they made to the Afghan people.
The Taliban government, which came to power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as US-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war, claims it respects women’s rights in accordance with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
“They systematically deprive women and girls of their fundamental human rights,” Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN, said. These choices are unrelated to Islam or Afghan culture, and they could lead to greater international isolation for Afghanistan.
Otunbayeva claims that while some Afghan women initially expressed relief at the Taliban’s rise to power because it put an end to the war, these women quickly lost hope.
Otunbayeva said at the Security Council meeting on Afghanistan on International Women’s Day that women there have said that being forced to hide from the public is worse than the threat of violent death.
The most repressive country in the world against women’s rights is Afghanistan under the Taliban, she said. How a legitimate government can ignore the wishes of half its citizens is beyond me.
