The international community cannot abandon Afghanistan, a senior UN aid official said on Thursday, urging continued engagement and support for the population.
File photo
AMN / WEB DESK
Afghanistan is “not a hopeless crisis,” Edem Wosornu of the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, told journalists in New York, following a recent visit to the country, Pakistan and war-wracked Sudan.
Ms. Wosornu was part of an all-woman delegation in Afghanistan, where the climate crisis has caused widespread water scarcity, generating new food, health, and nutrition needs.
Overall, 23 million people rely on humanitarian assistance – five times more than in 2019, and over 15 million now face high levels of food insecurity. Recent deadly floods in central and northern regions have added to the suffering.
Courageous women colleagues
Ms. Wosornu said restrictions imposed by the de facto Taliban authorities on Afghan women aid workers have added a layer of complexity to humanitarian operations in Afghanistan. Relatedly, some 1.4 million women and adolescent girls are still under an education ban.
“While delivering humanitarian assistance, our courageous Afghan female colleagues face many challenges and assume personal risks every day to and from work,” she said.
Meanwhile, humanitarian partners continue to negotiate with Taliban authorities on the issue.
Ms. Wosornu also raised the clampdown in talks with various senior officials, including the Taliban’s economic and foreign ministers, during her four-day visit.
“It was a constant part of my messaging: Afghan women need to work, and it is essential,” she said.
Asked about the education ban, she said the de facto authorities repeated the message that they need time, to which she responded, “we don’t have time because the numbers speak for themselves”.
“I was also very clear that the more we wait, the more millions of children will be affected and the more it will impact the society,” she said.
She also reported that some members of the “de facto authority community…were turning a blind eye to some of the activities that we were doing”. In some provinces, the UN humanitarians were allowed to move freely.
“So, there is hope to continue pushing. And the message, as I said before, at all levels was you need to lift these restrictions because we need to do our job in the education sector and the health sector.”