UN urges support for Afghan women amid tightening Taliban curbs

Filed 1w ago · Via al-monitor.com · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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The UN appealed to donors not to cut funding for women's programs in Afghanistan, warning that more than half of 74 surveyed women's organizations may have to suspend operations within a year. Susan Ferguson of UN Women said the Taliban have imposed over 100 decrees restricting women's rights since 2021, covering education, employment, movement, healthcare and justice.

A survey of 3,200 women found more than half now leave home only once or twice a month, and seven in ten describe their mental health as bad or very bad. The UN's $1.7 billion humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan is only 25% funded.

Separately, 56 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan issued a joint statement calling on the Taliban to reverse the restrictions, calling Afghanistan the only country banning girls from secondary and higher education. Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, the Central Asian states, India, Turkey and most Middle Eastern nations did not sign.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A joint statement from 56 countries is the diplomatic equivalent of a strongly worded email that everyone knows will be ignored, especially by the neighbors who actually share a border with the problem. The donors wringing their hands over funding shortfalls are largely the same governments deciding, budget line by budget line, to fund something else instead.

Source: Read the original at al-monitor.com → Scored: Comic Plodding · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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