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ISLAMABAD, Jan. 25 (AP) — The head of major aid organizations is pressuring the Taliban to reverse a decision banning Afghan women from working for national and international nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations humanitarian chief said Wednesday.
The Taliban’s move last month to ban women from working with NGOs prompted major international aid agencies to suspend operations in Afghanistan, although some have since resumed work in parts of the country.
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It has also raised concerns that millions of people will be cut off from critical services — some 28 million Afghans, or more than half the country’s population, need urgent humanitarian assistance.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, along with the heads of programs at CARE International, Save the Children USA and UNICEF, were in Afghanistan this week after a high-level UN delegation visited the country last week to try to persuade the Taliban to end Repression of women and girls, including banning Afghan women from working for national and global humanitarian organizations.
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Speaking in Kabul, Griffith said the visit was focused on teaching the Taliban how critical it was to get aid operations up and running and allow women to work in them.
He said the delegation’s message was simply that the ban made their job more difficult.
“What I’ve heard from everyone I’ve met is that they understand the need and rights of women to work in Afghanistan, and they’re going to develop a set of guidelines that we’ll see come out in due course, which will Respond to those demands,” Griffiths said.
Griffith and the delegation did not travel to Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and where the ban was issued on the orders of the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzdaza.
Griffiths acknowledged Akhundzada’s supremacy but said there were many important voices among Taliban officials from across the country.
“I don’t think it’s an easy thing to just hold one person accountable and change a statute,” he said.
“This decree is a collective responsibility and I hope we are building the collective will to remedy its prohibition.”
Janti Soeripto of Save the Children, who was part of the visiting delegation, said meetings were held with eight ministries over two days and some in the Taliban understood better than others the need to lift the ban.
“There’s resistance, they don’t want to be seen turning around,” she said.
“If people don’t look at the consequences as viscerally as we do, people feel less inclined.” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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