The Islamic Emirate said that the pressure is not a solution and that the Afghans need humanitarian aid.
Washington has been reviewing its approach and engagement with the “Taliban in context of many of the human rights violations” and actions that “we have seen from the Taliban in recent weeks and in recent months,” a spokesman for the US Department of State said.
US Department of State’s Spokesman, Ned Price said that the US is actively evaluating with allies and partners the appropriate next steps.
The Islamic Emirate said that the pressure is not a solution and that the Afghans need humanitarian aid.
“The pressure is never a solution. We have experienced it over the past 20 years but negotiations benefit all sides,” Islamic Emirate’s Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
Price said that 28 million Afghans need humanitarian aid.
“We’ve been the world’s leading humanitarian provider – $1.1 billion in assistance since August of 2021–to provide critical aid,” Price said. “And I have no doubt that we’ll continue to do everything we can to support the weighty humanitarian needs of the Afghan people.”
Price said that 83 percent of the organizations have either suspended or reduced their operations in Afghanistan following the bar on female employees working in NGOs.
“The people of Afghanistan seriously need aid in the current situation and the international aid organizations should help the Afghans,” said Darya Khan Baheer, an economist.
Price: US ‘Evaluating With Allies’ Next Steps in Afghanistan
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs also met with the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths has raised the issue of women’s education and work and how this affects UN operations, according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement.
Griffiths arrived in Afghanistan on Monday and met with several officials of the Islamic Emirate including the 2nd deputy PM, Abdul Salam Hanafi.
Women’s rights, humanitarian aid, the role of women aid workers in delivering aid to women and children, ensuring security, general amnesty, ban on poppy cultivation and the courts’ activities were discussed in the meeting, the deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate, Bilal Karimi, said.
Griffiths in his meeting with Hanafi said that the UN is appealing for $4.6 billion in 2023.
“The deputy of the Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate demanded that in case any side wants to make observations, the engagement should continue in order to reach a result,” Karimi said.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs also met with the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
“Afghanistan is part of the international community and the UN has the responsibility to play its role in creating closer ties between Afghanistan and the world,” said Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal, deputy spokesman for the foreign ministry.
The UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Griffiths would engage the caretaker Afghan government “with the same message that we’ve been delivering since the beginning on the need to roll back the policies that were put in place” on women.
He said Griffiths would “underscore the message that humanitarian aid cannot be delivered without women.”
The delegation led by Griffiths included CARE International secretary-general Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro, UNICEF deputy executive director Omar Abdi, and the head of Save the Children.
This comes as women’s rights activists said that the process of aid distribution without women’s participation will face challenges.
“The issue of women’s and human rights should not change into a political issue and half of the Afghan population should not be used for a political game,” said Marriam Naibi, a women’s rights activist.
Within the past two weeks, Griffiths is the second UN official to visit Afghanistan following the ban announced by the Islamic Emirate on female employees working at NGOs.
UN’s Griffiths in Kabul to Speak of Women’s Role in Aid Delivery
In late January 2022, 25-year-old Tamana Zaryab Paryani was arrested and imprisoned in Kabul. She was brutally tortured, abused, and interrogated for three weeks. Here, she tells DW her story.
“I was gagged, and my feet and hands were bound. They held my legs while one of the prison guards beat the soles of my feet with a cable. Sometimes they put my feet in water and used cables to give me electric shocks until I lost consciousness. They also put a plastic bag over my head, and only took it off when I was on the point of suffocation,” says Tamana Zaryab Paryani.
In January 2022, 25-year-old Tamana was arrested in Kabul in the middle of the night and thrown into jail. For three weeks she was brutally tortured, abused, and interrogated. Her three younger sisters were also imprisoned. Prior to this, Tamana had organized demonstrations against Taliban rule.
New laws for women
The Taliban accused Tamana of violating their new laws, in particular by publicly burning a burqa. After they seized power in August 2021, women were banned from actively participating in political or social life, and subjected to increasingly tight restrictions, including the obligation to wear the hijab. In May 2022, this requirement was expanded: All women must now wear a full-body covering such as the burqa. The Taliban put up posters in Kabul and other cities likening women without such coverings to animals.
Tamana Zaryab Paryani studied law, and before the Taliban takeover she worked as a newspaper journalist. Like many other women in Kabul, she refused to accept the Taliban’s new restrictions. She was one of the organizers of protests attended by hundreds of women in early September 2021. The Taliban brutally suppressed them by beating, shooting, and arresting the participants.
Tamana herself was not arrested straight away. It was only months later that armed Taliban fighters forced their way into the apartment where she lived with her three sisters.
Tamana had the presence of mind to film the violent intrusion and post it on Facebook. That way, many people all over the world were able to follow her arrest — and her cry for help was probably what saved her and her sisters’ lives. At the time, though, she had no way of knowing this.
Imprisoned and tortured
Her sisters Zarmina, Shafiqa and Kerishma were arrested along with Tamana, and were taken to the same prison, but the sisters had no contact with each other. They, too, were brutally tortured for 26 days.
“I’d never thought about death before,” says 17-year-old Shafiqa. “I was at an age when such thoughts were alien to me. But after being imprisoned by the Taliban, I couldn’t think about anything else.”
Shafiqa, Zarmina, Tamana and Kerishma Paryani (left to right) came to Germany in October 2022Image: Tamana Zaryab Paryani
After considerable pressure from aid organizations and human rights activists, the Taliban released a large number of women demonstrators from prison on payment of bail. The women had to hand over documentation for their houses and possessions to the Taliban, and they were banned from taking part in protests, being politically active, or speaking to the media.
Tamana and her sisters were allowed to go home on February 13, 2022, after which they saw women’s rights curtailed still further. In addition to being obliged to cover themselves from head to toe, women are no longer allowed to leave the house unless accompanied by a man, and girls and women have been excluded from attending school and university.
Help from abroad
News of Tamana’s and her sisters’ imprisonment sparked a big reaction on social media. Tamana’s video of the arrest made many people aware of their fate — including, in Germany, the evacuation initiative Kabul Luftbrücke, the editorial team at the women’s magazine EMMA, and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
In October 2022, Tamana and all 10 members of her family were able to emigrate to Germany via Pakistan. Since then, they have been busy settling into their new life here. A year has passed since they escaped the horrors of prison, but Tamana, Shafiqa, Kerishma and Zarmina have yet to recover from those terrible weeks. They suffer from anxiety and have terrible nightmares.
Tamana Zaryab Paryani filmed her own arrestImage: Privat
“In the cell where we were imprisoned, I could hear the screams of other women and girls,” says Shafiqa. “Those screams still ring in my ears to this day. I tremble and come up in goosebumps.” One year on, her youngest sister still clearly remembers how she feared each breath could be her last.
Thousands are still trapped
The sisters know they are safe in Germany, and that they were very lucky, stressing the fact that many thousands of women and men are still “trapped in the Taliban’s regime of terror in Afghanistan,” frightened and suffering every day, fearing for their lives.
However, since their arrival in Germany, the sisters have also been targeted by Taliban sympathizers living here. They have made vitriolic accusations, and even threats.
Zarmina has tears in her eyes as she says she worries about the other women demonstrators in Afghanistan who have not been able to leave the country. She reports that many girls who were sexually abused in prison have committed suicide, because they feared for their reputation and that of their family.
Zarmina Paryani, a nurse, is thankful to have escaped the Taliban, but fears for the women of AfghanistanImage: Tamana Zaryab Paryani
“We fought for justice and equality. We made sacrifices,” Tamana says of her time in Afghanistan. “But we suffer here, too, for our compatriots in our homeland.”
Tamana fears that Taliban rule will be “even more brutal, even more cruel” in the future. Along with, and despite, the difficult situation of women in Iran and in Ukraine, she and her sisters appeal to the international community not to forget the women of Afghanistan.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian chief and leaders of two major international aid organizations are in Afghanistan following last week’s visit by a delegation led by the U.N.’s highest-ranking woman with the same aim – reversing the Taliban’s crackdown on women and girls including its ban on Afghan women working for national and global humanitarian organizations.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths was in the Afghan capital Monday along with Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save The Children US, and Sofia Sprechmann Sineiro, the secretary general of Care International as well as Omar Abdi, the deputy executive director of UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
Dujarric said last month’s Taliban ban on Afghan women working for non-governmental organizations has put some aid programs on hold and is “sowing fears that the already dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan will get even worse.”
Some 28 million Afghans are in need of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid, “a 350% hike in just five years,” according to the latest report released Monday on the Humanitarian Needs Overview for Afghanistan, Dujarric said.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said last Friday that the delegation headed by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed found that some Taliban officials were more open to restoring women’s rights but others were clearly opposed.
“The key thing is to reconcile the (Taliban) officials that they’ve met who’ve been more helpful with those who have not,” Haq said.
Mohammed, a former Nigerian Cabinet minister and a Muslim who is the U.N.’s highest-ranking woman, was joined on the trip by Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women which promotes gender equality and women’s rights, and Assistant Secretary General for political affairs Khaled Khiari.
The U.N. team met with the Taliban in the capital of Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, but the U.N. did not release the names of any of the Taliban officials. The meetings focused on the restrictive measures the Taliban have imposed on women and girls since they took power in August 2021, during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces’ pullout after 20 years of war.
Griffiths is expected to focus especially on reversing the December ban on Afghan women working for NGOs. The U.N. has stressed that Afghan women are crucial to delivering humanitarian help to civilians, the majority of them women and children.
UN aid chief seeking to reverse ban on Afghan women workers
Takal said that Muttaqi assured Qin of ensuring the security of Chinese companies and vowed more efforts for regional security.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in a phone call with the acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed China’s support for the Afghan interim government to build a broad and inclusive political structure in the country.
Global Times quoted the Chinese FM as saying that China never interferes in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, nor seeks any selfish gains in Afghanistan or the so-called sphere of influence.
Meanwhile, Muttaqi said that China is committed to cooperating with Afghanistan.
“We talked about one hour on the phone. Our discussion focused on how to cooperate with each other? How to invest in Afghanistan? How to ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan. We had talks with them in agriculture sector as well,” he said.
A spokesman for Afghan Foreign Ministry, Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal said in a statement said that the two sides discussed biliteral relations between the two countries and the provision of security for China’s investment in Afghanistan.
Takal said that Muttaqi assured Qin of ensuring the security of Chinese companies and vowed more efforts for regional security.
Takal said that the Chinese minister vowed to make efforts to improve relations between Kabul and Beijing and said China respects the “independence, sovereignty and religious and cultural values” of Afghanistan.
“The Foreign Minister assured the Chinese side that the Afghan government is trying for regional security and stability and it will not allow any group to use Afghan soil against other countries. Muttaqi also stressed on security of Chinese companies in Afghanistan,” he said.
Analysts said that China has an important role in improvement of situation in Afghanistan.
“The rest of the world has its demands. They ask for something else in return while they give something. China can provide aid to Afghanistan,” said Zakiullah Mohammadi, a political analyst. “Having relations with China, especially diplomatic relations benefits Afghanistan.”
China has signed two major contracts of Mess Aynak and extraction of oil from the Amu River basin.
China Supports Inclusive Political Structure in Afghanistan: Qin
Extreme cold amidst harsh winter has created many concerns about the challenging conditions of Afghans.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a report on Monday said that Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with “a very real risk of systemic collapse and human catastrophe.”
According to OCHA, in addition to unimaginable human costs, this humanitarian crisis is reversing many of the gains of the last 20 years, including women’s rights.
The report said that 17 million people will face acute hunger in 2023, including 6 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity.
“Deterioration is expected in the first quarter of 2023 due to the simultaneous effects of winter and the lean season, sustained high food prices, reduced income and unemployment and continued economic decline,” the report reads.
Extreme cold amidst harsh winter has created many concerns about the challenging conditions of Afghans.
“I earn 100 Afs every day and it cannot meet any demand. I have not bought anything for the winter so far,” said Ahmad, a Kabul resident.
“I have only four blankets. There is nothing to eat or wear,” said a Kabul resident.
This comes as the head of the Swiss development agency said his country remains committed to humanitarian work in Afghanistan despite the ban on women working in NGOs.
The office of the Swiss development agency in Kabul was closed after the Islamic Emirate swept into power in August 2021. It is currently operating from Pakistan.
The director of the organization, Patricia Danzi, said in an interview with the NZZ said that the SDC is assessing how to use the CHF30 million ($33 million) budget effectively.
“Lack of economic infrastructure and investment are the main reasons for the increasing poverty and humanitarian crisis over one and half year,” said Shabir Bashiri, an analyst.
This comes as the Minister of Economy, Abdul Latif Nazari, said that efforts are underway to spend the aid in infrastructure projects.
“We will use the aid for development activities and addressing of fundamental needs,” Nazari said.
The OCHA report said that the collapse of the previous government resulted in the suspension of direct international development assistance, which previously accounted for 75 percent of public expenditure, including the maintenance of the public health system.
Afghanistan Faces Unprecedented Humanitarian Crisis: UN Agency
The United Nations deputy chief, Amina Mohammed, in an interview with TOLOnews said that her organization will continue to support women in Afghanistan.
Mohammed said she would put pressure on the Islamic Emirate together with a number of countries to respect Afghan women’s rights.
“Before coming to this country, we visited a number of countries and had consultations to bring momentum and the pressure and the consensus to this government to speak to women to give them hope that we have not left,” she said.
She said the delegation’s visit to Kabul was aimed at meeting with officials in Kabul to discuss the removal of restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan.
“First, I have been to Afghanistan before. This is my second time, but this visit is very special. It is special because the intention of the secretary general in sending this high-level delegation, myself and the head of UN Women, is to come and meet with the de facto authorities to engage with them on the two bans that they had edict on the prohibition of women in the workplace and in education and to really see how we can reverse those bans,” she said.
The high-ranking UN representative said she will keep negotiating with the Afghan government until women’s rights are protected.
But Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the current government will make an effort to address the issue of restrictions on women’s education and employment.
“They have expressed their concerns in meeting with the officials, and the Islamic Emirate officials have told them that we will take steps in all possible cases that are in accordance with the Islamic Sharia,” Mujahid said.
This comes as women and girls have been banned from attending schools and universities and from going to amusement parks, baths, sports clubs, traveling without a male guardian, and working for non-governmental organizations. The decisions have triggered global reactions.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who held talks with Taliban, tells Al Jazeera some progress in the health sector made but much remains to be done.
A UN delegation, which held talks with senior Taliban officials in Afghanistan, has made headway on women’s rights, the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told Al Jazeera on Saturday, cautioning that much remains to be achieved.
The high-level meeting earlier this week comes amid widespread criticism of the governing Taliban for banning women from universities and NGOs last month. Millions of high school girls have already been confined to their homes as schools remain shut. The Taliban has gone back on its promises of women’s rights and media freedom since they stormed to power in August 2021 after the West-backed government collapsed.
“There has been some progress. Some exemptions have been made to the edicts that have covered the health sector,” Mohammed, who led the delegation, said, referring to the resumption of work by three NGOs last week.
“I think that’s because the international community, and particularly the partners who are funding this were able to show the implications and the impact of the woman-to-woman services, particularly childbirth,” she added.
Not enough, she said, adding that was just the very beginning. “We’ve opened up a crack and we hope that through the reversals we can eventually get to a stage where you neutralise those edicts and women are back in school and girls and of course in the workplace.”
The 61-year-old UN diplomat said her delegation met with cabinet members, including the foreign minister, deputy prime minister and minister of refugees and returnees.
The group also met the governor of Kandahar, as well as the Shura (leadership council) that is responsible for taking many key decisions in the country.
“I was always very clear that I am going there as an opportunity to air the voices of Afghan women. We heard from young women who said, ‘We do not need your voice, what we need is you amplify ours,’” Mohammed told Al Jazeera in an interview.
“I was very focused on getting those messages across.”
‘Important to have a conversation’
Mohammed, the UN’s top-ranking female official, described the current laws on women’s education and workplace as an “aberration” to the teachings of Islam but emphasised the need to engage with the Taliban.
“What we did see was an understanding … of how important it was for girls’ rights and women’s rights in education. They all didn’t … didn’t push back on that. But what they said was that … it is a work in progress and they’re going to come back to us with the new framing around which they would protect women that would be accessing education and also the workplace,” Mohammed, who is the first Muslim UN deputy secretary-general, said.
Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the “unprecedented, systemic attacks on women’s and girls’ rights”, which he said “are creating gender-based apartheid”.
Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said some NGOs were trying to create what he called ‘social change’ in Afghanistan.
But he says the Taliban is allowing organisations to operate if they align with the country’s values.
Those NGOs which were committed to the “cardinal principle of NGO work [such as] impartiality and neutrality” were given exemptions in some areas, including health, Balkhi told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
Mohammed, a former minister of environment in the Nigerian government, before she visited Kabul, reached out to the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which expressed concern about restrictions on women.
The OIC, the grouping of Muslim nations, issued a statement saying that what is happening in Afghanistan is against the holy Quran and Islam.
Moreover, Mohammed, said she was “surprised” by the Taliban’s “need and want to be recognised”.
To date, no country in the world has recognised the Taliban-led government since they stormed to power 17 months ago weeks in advance of the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces after 20 years of war and occupation.
Western nations and others have demanded the group lift restrictions on women’s rights and make the government more representative.
Asked if the UN itself would recognise the group, Mohammed, the UN envoy, said, “I hope there is a day that we do recognise this government, provided it is based on the principles that they need to understand and uphold as part of the international family.”
“But I do fear that what we are doing is having women and girls caught in the crossfire, and it’s really important we don’t do that. We heard the stories of many Afghan women who, because of this, are not able to feed their children,” she added.
“They’re painful stories of women who don’t know where the next meal is coming from.”
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the humanitarian crises in the country were affecting 28 million people.
Dozens of Afghans have died in the severe cold wave sweeping the country.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
UN envoy says ‘progress’ made on Afghan women’s rights
The Islamic Emirate called recognition important for economic and political improvement in the region.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that during the visit of its envoy to Afghanistan, the two sides discussed recognition of the Islamic Emirate.
The statement said that Russian envoy Zamir Kabulov has also discussed strengthening of economic, cultural education relations between the two countries as well as issues of terrorism and prevention of narcotics.
“In the meeting, there was a considerable attention by the Russian envoy for Afghanistan for recognition and the diplomacy of the Islamic Emirate by the international community,” the statement reads.
The Islamic Emirate called recognition important for economic and political improvement in the region.
“Countries should understand that imposition of pressure and other political pressures will not bring results. It is better to engage with the Afghans,” Islamic Emirate spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
“They have discussed some of the issues. Russia is trying to make the Taliban busy in improvement of relations with Russia and show the Taliban that it is recognizing them,” said Rahmatullah Bizhanpor, a political analyst.
“Russia will not recognize Afghanistan in the near future and if Russia is the only country to recognize Afghanistan, the problems of Afghanistan will not be solved” said Torek Farhadi, a political analyst.
It has been more than 16 months since the Islamic Emirate swept into power but is yet to be recognized by any country in the world.
Moscow Discussed Recognition with Islamic Emirate: Russian Foreign Ministry
According to UNESCO, more than 118 million girls across the globe are out of school.
The Turkish foreign minister at a conference with his Iranian counterpart on Tuesday emphasized on the need to provide women and girls access to education and work.
Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Tuesday that the there is no religious justification for the ban on women’s access to education.
“We have confirmed our consistent view regarding restrictions on girls children access to education and women’s access to work in Afghanistan,” the Turkish foreign minister said.
“We will engage in this regard with the Taliban or if it was needed we will continue our activities under the umbrella of the Organization of the Islamic Countries Cooperation. Our religion, Islam has not banned education and on the contrary it stresses on education. Then these issues are in contradict with our religion and are inhumane,” he added.
According to UNESCO, more than 118 million girls across the globe are out of school.
The UN Secretary-General said that nothing can “justify keeping girls out of the classroom.”
“The ruling side in Afghanistan should pay attention that as much as we witness the restrictions regarding women’s rights and freedom, there will be further reactions,” said Marriam Arseen, a women’s rights activist.
“I am one of the girls whose schools were closed for the past two years and we were able to continue our lessons amidst many problems,” said Huma, a student.
“The restrictions that were imposed on women should be canceled and schools and educational centers should be reopened,” said Zahra, a student.
The decrees of the Islamic Emirate to ban women and girls from having access to education and work at NGOs have faced widespread reactions at national and international levels.
But the caretaker government says the decisions are not permanent and that they are temporary.
Iran, Turkey Seek Women’s Access to Education in Afghanistan
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
