EU Condemns Taliban for Banning Female NGO Staff

European Union (EU) foreign policy head Josep Borrell on Sunday condemned the Taliban junta for barring women from working for both local and foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Save the Children and four other international aid agencies suspended operations in Afghanistan on Sunday after the ban was announced.

Borrell said the EU was “appalled” by the Taliban’s move, which followed “last week’s ban of women attending university and a violent crackdown of peaceful protests by women.”

“Together they amount to erasing women from public space,” he said.

Borrell noted that at least 30 million Afghans depend on humanitarian aid to survive, so the Taliban is putting countless lives at risk by interfering with NGO staffing.

“Women have a particular important role in the delivery of assistance to other women. Restricting women’s participation in this critical work will prevent the delivery of such assistance to a large part of the population, including widows, women-led households and children,” he explained.

“The EU, as one of the major providers of humanitarian and basic needs assistance to the people of Afghanistan, strongly condemns this ban and calls on the Taliban to lift their decision immediately, as part of their obligation to respect international humanitarian law and humanitarian principles,” he demanded.

As Borrell noted in his statement, the Taliban ejected women from university education last week, after banning girls from grade schools above sixth grade in March. In November, the Taliban banned women from attending amusement parks and gymnasiums, effectively killing off the former, since women were the primary escorts for children visiting amusement parks.

Women protested the university ban in Kabul and other cities on Thursday, only to be met with sickening violence from Taliban enforcers, who broke up the marches with beatings and whippings. Men who demonstrated in solidarity with the banned women have also been subjected to harassment by the Taliban.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed sentiments similar to Borrell’s on Twitter over the weekend:

The Taliban’s economy ministry barred women from working for NGOs on Saturday, ostensibly for the same reason women were kicked out of universities and amusement parks: too many of them were violating the Taliban’s strict Islamic dress code and violating its orders against fraternizing with men.

According to the ministry, “serious complaints” were filed against female NGO employees for disrespecting “the Islamic hijab and other rules and regulations pertaining to the work of females in national and international organizations.”

The United Nations responded that “many” of its humanitarian programs would be seriously hindered by the Taliban order, since it contracts with NGOs to handle aid distribution in Afghanistan.

“There’s never a right time for anything like this,” observed U.N. deputy special representative for Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov, “but this particular time is very unfortunate because during winter time people are most in need and Afghan winters are very harsh.”

“An important principle of delivery of humanitarian aid is the ability of women to participate independently and in an unimpeded way in its distribution so if we can’t do it in a principled way then no donors will be funding any programs like that,” he said.

Soon after the Taliban issued its ban, an international humanitarian group called AfghanAid announced it would suspend operations. On Sunday, Save the Children and four other NGO’s followed suit.

“We cannot effectively reach children, women and men in desperate need in Afghanistan without our female staff,” Save the Children said in a statement co-signed by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and CARE International.

The NRC said about a third of its 1,500 workers in Afghanistan are female, and insisted they have operated “according to all traditional values, dress code, movement, and separation of offices” orders issued by the Taliban.

Also suspending operations was the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which said 3,000 of its 8,000 employees in Afghanistan are women. A fourth group, Islamic Relief, said the ban on women would “devastating humanitarian impact on millions of vulnerable men, women and children across the country” and called on the Taliban to rescind it immediately.

Afghan women who worked for NGOs told the BBC on Monday they were the primary breadwinners in their families under the Taliban’s ruinous economy, so the survival of their families was placed at risk by their sudden unemployment.

The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed its concerns on Monday, warning of “catastrophic humanitarian consequences in the short to long term.”

“We do not allow anyone to talk rubbish or make threats regarding the decisions of our leaders under the title of humanitarian aid,” sneered Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in response.

Mujahid was specifically pushing back against the head of the U.S. mission of Afghanistan, Karen Decker, who noted the U.S. is “the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan” and asked how the Taliban “intends to prevent women and children from starving when women are no longer permitted to distribute assistance to other women and children.”

Decker said Taliban economy minister Qari din Mohammed Hanif should be held personally responsible for the consequences of the ban, since his signature appears on the order.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan after U.S. President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal in August 2021. The new Taliban regime promised to treat women better than the previous regime, which was overthrown after the U.S. invasion in 2001, but it has systematically violated those promises. 

Leaders from around the world have condemned each of the Taliban’s harsh actions against women over the past month, but so far none have come up with a plan for forcing the Islamist extremists to backtrack. 

The U.N. will be in an especially difficult position, as its direct employees are not technically covered by the NGO ban. It would be politically difficult for the U.N. to tell its female workers to continue operations while so many other women are prohibited from working, but on the other hand, the need for humanitarian aid among the Taliban’s misruled subjects is desperate, and the U.N. typically shies away from retaliatory actions that would deprive civilians of food and medicine. The Taliban has, in effect, taken the unfortunate people of Afghanistan hostage, and it expects the rest of the world to care for their needs.