Taliban ban on women work

The United Nations on Friday said it will continue to keep Afghan staff working from home as the Taliban regime had put a ban on women working for the UN a month ago, Afghanistan-based Pajhwok Afghan News reported.

Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq on Friday said there had been no change to "our posture on the ground." Earlier, the UN had said it would review its operations and keep Afghan staff home until May 5.

"We're working to come to decisions on appropriate working modalities. Obviously, we have a challenge because the needs of the Afghan people are immense, and we intend to fulfil those needs, but at the same time, our operations are clearly impeded," Haq told reporters in New York.

The Afghan people are in for a "very difficult year ahead", Haq said.

The UN has 3,300 Afghan staff, of whom about 400 are female, while about 600 international staff in the country are not affected by the ban.

Haq said aid work continued in areas like health and education where the UN had been able to get some limited exemptions to the ban on Afghan women. He indicated, however, that some UN agencies may be taking a different approach.

"I believe that different agencies have different mandates about the provision of aid and so they have had different ways of handling the situation as I characterized it," Haq said, according to Pajhwok Afghan News.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said that funding for aid operations remains at worryingly low levels and the ban is exacerbating this trend.

Guterres reiterated the UN's commitment to stay and deliver on behalf of the men, women and children of Afghanistan. To achieve this efficiently and effectively, the UN needs all its personnel, women and men, to work in communities and UN offices unimpeded, the statement added.