By Fatima Adib in TOLOnews Online, April 06, 2023 at 8:23 PM
The United Nations Security Council will have a discussion about women’s employment in Afghanistan on Thursday evening in response to the ban on female employees of the organization in Nangarhar province, US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, said.
Greenfield said on Twitter that “women are integral to humanitarian operations, including in Afghanistan where they provide lifesaving aid to the country’s most vulnerable.”
“The UN Security Council will convene (meeting) tomorrow to discuss the Taliban’s repugnant decision to bar women from working with the UN,” Greenfield added.
“We are working with other members of the council as well as with the secretary general in the UN to respond to this. They cannot be allowed to continue to restrict women from providing support to women,” Greenfield told reporters.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates mission to the UN said the UAE envoy in a meeting with Japan representative to the UN asked the UNSC to hold consultations about the situation in Afghanistan.
“Together, with our co-penholder Japanese Mission UN, we have called for the UNSC to hold closed consultations tomorrow on the situation in Afghanistan to hear from SRSG Roza Otunbayeva on the reported ban on Afghan women working for the UN,” the UAE mission to the UN said in a tweet on Wednesday.
A number of analysts said that bans on women could further isolate Afghanistan.
“Such steps can create gaps between the international community and the government of the Islamic Emirate in the current situation of the Islamic Emirate, which is experiencing political, economic, and international isolation,” said Mohammad Zalmay Afghanyar, a political affairs analyst.
“I don’t think that the approaches of the Security Council meeting will have any meaningful impact on the decision of the Islamic Emirate because the UN has not recognized the Islamic Emirate and has not granted them a seat,” said Salim Kakar, a political affairs analyst.
A UN spokesman on Tuesday said that the organization will discuss the negative impacts of the decision with the Afghan Ministry of Foreign on Wednesday.
https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-182850
