GENEVA (6 April 2023) – UN experts* today demanded the immediate reversal of the Taliban’s recent order banning Afghan women from working with the United Nations in Afghanistan.
On 4 April, the de facto authorities prevented women working for the United Nations in Jalalabad from attending their places of work. Yesterday they issued a countrywide ban on Afghan women working with the United Nations. This follows the ban on women working with NGOs, issued on 24 December 2022, and the extensive list of earlier restrictions on women and girls issued since the Taliban took power.
The latest ban is unlawful discrimination against and a direct attack on women, and wholly against the core values and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international human rights treaties to which Afghanistan is a party and humanitarian principles.