UN Tells Afghan Staff To Stay Home

The United Nations has instructed all of its personnel in Afghanistan to stay away from its offices in the country, after the Taliban banned Afghan women from working with the organization.

“UN national personnel – women and men – have been instructed not to report to UN offices, with only limited and calibrated exceptions made for critical tasks,” the organization said in a statement.

It comes after Afghan men working for the UN in Kabul stayed home last week in solidarity with their female colleagues.

The UN said the Taliban’s move was an extension of a previous ban, enforced last December, that prohibited Afghan women from working for national and international non-governmental organizations.

The organization said the ban is “the latest in a series of discriminatory measures implemented by the Taliban de facto authorities with the goal of severely restricting women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan.”

It will continue to “assess the scope, parameters and consequences of the ban, and pause activities where impeded,” the statement said, adding that the “matter will be under constant review.”

Several female UN staff in the country had already experienced restrictions on their movements since the Taliban seized power in 2021, including harassment and detention.

Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Deputy Special Representative, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, called the Taliban’s decision an “unparalleled violation of human rights” last week.

“The lives of Afghanistan women are at stake,” he said, adding, “It is not possible to reach women without women.”

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, is engaging with the Taliban at the highest level to “seek an immediate reversal of the order,” the UN said last week.

CNN/Shakirat Sadiq