The Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced on Friday that the temperature will dip to -35 degrees Celsius in parts of Afghanistan this week. OCHA added that the ban on women’s work by the Taliban has affected distribution of humanitarian aid.
OCHA on Friday said that humanitarian partners provide support to Afghan families so that they are able to survive through the harsh winters in the country.
United Nations has stressed that Afghanistan is on the edge of a big crisis and more than 28 million people need humanitarian aid in 2023 in the country.
Following Taliban’s ban on women’s work in non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan, many international donor organisations have stopped their operations in Afghanistan.
The closed-door meeting of the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) on Afghanistan on Friday must focus on how to reverse the stifling ban by the Taliban on women and girls from accessing work, education, sports and public spaces, said Amnesty International.
The global organisation added that with poverty rates skyrocketing, the Taliban’s decision to ban women from working with NGOs is pushing the country further into a humanitarian crisis.
“It is imperative that the UN Security Council halts the steep decline in women and girls’ rights in the country. The world watches as the Taliban systematically decimate women’s rights through numerous discriminatory restrictions rolled out by them in quick succession over the last few months,” said Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for South Asia.
Amnesty International called on the Taliban to immediately allow women and girls to return to secondary and tertiary education and to allow women to work and access public spaces independently.
It also asked the international community to call on the Taliban to reverse their restrictive policies.
Recalling the repressive policies regarding women implemented by the Taliban, Amnesty International stated that on 24 December 2022, Taliban ordered all local and foreign NGOs not to employ female employees; then on 20 December, they ordered all universities to not accept women students until further notice and in November 2022, women had been denied the right to enter parks and gyms in the country.
Amnesty International added, “The UNSC must call not only for the Taliban to urgently lift their restrictions on women and girls, but also for an end to their crackdown on anyone who dares to protest against these constraints in Afghanistan.”
The statement emphasised that the NGO-led aid sector, which is the main source of humanitarian assistance in the country, is teetering on the brink of collapse with at least three major international NGOs -CARE, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children and the United Nations– having suspended their operations in the country because they were unable to run their programs without female staff.
Noting that Afghan women and girls are already denied access to secondary and tertiary education, the statement added that the ban on women working with NGOs will also prevent students from accessing education through community-based education systems. Such programs were the only way about 3.7 million out-of-school children, about 60 percent of whom are girls, could still access schooling in pre-Taliban era. The teachers working in this system are primarily women and would be classified by the Taliban as NGO workers, it said.
Stressing on how the Taliban removed women working for the government, including those with roles in civil service, policy-making bodies and the judiciary, the statement recalled how since Taliban took control of the country in August 2021, they have violated women’s and girls’ rights to education, work and free movement; decimated the system of protection and support for those fleeing domestic violence; detained women and girls for minor violations of discriminatory rules; and contributed to a surge in the rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan.
Earlier too, Amnesty International’s report, Death in Slow Motion: Women and Girls Under Taliban Rule, revealed how women who peacefully protested against these oppressive rules have been threatened, arrested, detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared.
Fazal Ahmad Manawi, former Minister of Justice, confirmed that Taliban fighter set fire to his house and library in Panjshir province. Manawi told Afghanistan International, “Very old and valuable books were present in that collection."
However, Taliban officials have said that the fire started due to an electrical short-circuit, whereas Manawi believes that it was intentional.
Taliban has been using the house as a military base.
Photos received by Afghanistan International shows a plume of smoke over the house.
Fazal Ahmad Manawi is a leading member of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF). Recently, he submitted documents of war crimes to the International Criminal Court. Over the past days, Manawi objected to the Taliban’s agreement with a Chinese company regarding extraction of oil from the Amu Darya basin and called it illegal.
Emergency Hospital in Kabul announced that they have received 47 victims from the site of the suicide attack in front of the Taliban's foreign ministry on Wednesday. Of the victims received, three had been declared dead on arrival.
The hospital announced that 19 of the injured are in “critical” condition.
Reports indicate that at least 20 people died as the result of the attack.
Emergency Hospital’s Country Director, in video message said that one of the injured has been discharged after receiving medical services.
According to the sources, at least 16 of the victims who lost their lives in the explosion, were employees of the foreign ministry.
The United Nations and several countries condemned the attack.
ISIS claimed responsibility of the attack in Kabul.
Zamir Kabulov, the Russian special envoy for Afghanistan, met the Taliban's foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. A Taliban spokesperson quoted Kabulov as saying that Moscow does not want to criticise the Taliban and interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.
Kabulov has also reportedly said that Moscow wants stability and development in Afghanistan.
The Taliban foreign minister has appreciated Moscow’s cooperation with the group over the past year.
During the meeting, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister, asked for the expansion of the diplomatic presence of the group in Moscow.
Last year, the Taliban sent a diplomat to Moscow to work as the Charge d'Affaires of the Afghan embassy in Russia.
The Taliban, which has close relations with Russia, also wants to expand trade relations with the country. According to the Taliban foreign ministry, Muttaqi has also discussed the expansion of trade relations between Russia and Afghanistan.
Kabulov has also stressed that Russia does not want Afghanistan to be isolated and continues to cooperate with the Taliban.
This is the second visit of Zamir Kabulov to Kabul since the Taliban came to power in August 2021.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its latest World Report 2023 highlighted that at least 700 people have been killed and injured due to the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) carrying out attacks on schools and mosques, mostly targeting ethnic Hazara Shia Muslims.
The report listed some attacks over 2022, which the ISKP had claimed responsibility for in 2022, including on April 19, when a suicide bomber blew himself at a high school in Dasht-e Barchi, west Kabul, a predominantly Hazara and Shia area, which killed or injured 20 students, teachers, and staff.
“ISKP also claimed responsibility for an attack two days later at Seh Dokan Mosque in Mazar e Sharif that killed 31 people and wounded 87 others. On April 27, unidentified gunmen killed five Hazara men on their way to the Dare-Suf coal mine in Samangan. On September 30, an attack on an educational center in west Kabul, again a Hazara dominated area, killed 53 and injured 100 students, mostly women and girls,” the report stated.
The report emphasised that the Taliban’s failure to provide security to at-risk populations and medical and other assistance to survivors and affected families has exacerbated the harm caused by the attacks.
HRW said that the attacks exacted a severe long-term toll apart from the immediate impact as it deprived survivors and families of victims of breadwinners, often imposing severe medical burdens, and restricting their access to daily life.