Guest Post from Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford
‘Once again, humanitarians are bogged down in a moral predicament in Afghanistan. The extreme misogyny of Taliban policy is back and international humanitarian agencies should refuse to cooperate with it.
The Taliban’s initial tolerance of gender equality in 2021 proved, very predictably, to be just a ploy to trick Western aid agencies into staying and paying. It was about budget support and international recognition, not gender justice. The Taliban have now shown their true face in their countrywide persecution of women and girls, who are banned from most areas of public life and education.
On Christmas Eve, the Taliban banned women aid workers too. Humanitarians are now wondering what to do.
A humanitarian exception is not enough
In a statement just after Christmas, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC, the highest level humanitarian coordination forum) started lobbying for a humanitarian carve-out that would make an exception for aid agencies. Their statement spoke only of the instrumental value of women as humanitarian workers and said nothing about the absolute value of women as human beings.
This is morally inadequate. It misses the point. Women are being persecuted as a group across Afghanistan. Humanitarians need to recognize this outright and stand against it, making clear that the Taliban’s mistaken form of Islam amounts to the comprehensive persecution of fifty percent of the population. Nor is it morally sufficient, as some aid workers are privately arguing, that because Taliban leaders in about 25% of the country are turning a blind eye to edicts on women’s education and work, humanitarians should keep engaging. This seems to accept that persecution of women in 75% of Afghanistan is tolerable.
A blinkered humanitarian view of the persecution of women in Afghanistan today, which focuses only on aid agency staffing, is rightly troubling the conscience of many humanitarians who see the problem as much bigger than its effect on their own operations. They are right to do so.
The Taliban’s denial of women’s humanity
The Taliban’s view of women denies their full humanity. Its inhumane theology confines women to a private sphere of life in which their duty is only to care for men, give birth, nurture children, run the household and guard their modesty. For this role, the Taliban determine that women need a primary education at most and minimal access to public space.
This ideology places women only a little above a faithful horse or a delicious pomegranate in the Taliban’s order of things. It gives women the right to exist biologically but with a social and spiritual vocation prescribed by Taliban men. Under recent edicts, women have no free will in how they live their lives, develop their personality, use their power and participate in their society. They are being eradicated from public space and from Afghan culture and society.
This is not the fullness of human life and is closer to servitude than freedom. The Taliban’s persecution of women is a religious and legal abomination, that constitutes a crime against humanity, in this case women’s humanity. Taliban misogynist policy also deeply diminishes the humanity of Afghan men, boys and girls who flourish because of the full participation of women in society. It is a national disaster.
Humanitarian complicity
The current IASC approach follows a conventional strategy of neutral humanitarianism, which uses limited complicity to secure humanitarian gains by engaging with the Taliban.
The complicity calculation is that biological life is paramount because it is sacred in itself and, if kept alive, a person may one day experience a better quality of life. For this reason, humanitarians have always worked closely with terrible regimes to prioritize the quantity of life regardless of limits on the quality of that life.
Humanitarians could continue their limited complicity with the Taliban, perhaps justifying it by saying “there are Taliban moderates we can work with despite the hard liners”. In such limited complicity, they do not share the Taliban’s inhumane policy for women but they do still recognize the Taliban, show them respect, and compromise with them on a daily basis in ways which inevitably bend humanitarian programming towards Taliban policy.
I sympathize with these arguments and have used them many times myself. I’m sure such compromise will also remain persuasive to many humanitarians if the ban on women aid workers is not reversed. “But surely” they will say, “even with only male staff we can save and improve lives, so we must go on.” I expect UN agencies and the ICRC may follow this line, but they would be wrong to do so in this case.
So, what should international humanitarians do in the face of such a comprehensive political crime?
If international humanitarians compromise with such extreme misogyny and its comprehensive persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan, then they weaken the universal moral standing of gender equality and the principle of humanity on which it is based
Refusal, non-cooperation and exit
Some international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are refusing to cooperate with Taliban policy and are suspending their operations. For them, working with an Islamist dictatorship that persecutes all women and girls is a step too far down the slippery slope of complicity. I agree with them for two main reasons.
First, the universal significance of gender equality and women’s rights. Women’s rights are a profound part of justice across the world today and an essential element of the principle of humanity. It is something to stand up for. Taliban policy is not some deeply popular manifestation of culture and custom. It is a catastrophic restriction of the humanity of women and girls and their creative influence in wider society.
If international humanitarians compromise with such extreme misogyny and its comprehensive persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan, then they weaken the universal moral standing of gender equality and the principle of humanity on which it is based. They also create a precedent for compromising it elsewhere. Humanitarians cannot cooperate with ideologues who insist that full humanity is only for men and boys.
Second is political realism. Liberal values are losing in Afghanistan for now, and Western sponsored humanitarian agencies are the least likely of all political powers to influence the Taliban on its core policies. The Taliban detest the West. Politically, it is now the turn of Afghan men and women – and the Asian powers around them – to influence the Taliban and set up systems of humanitarian aid.
China, Pakistan, Qatar, Iran, India and Central Asian powers have greater responsibility than Western leverage and power in Afghanistan today. Western humanitarians and diplomats who keep insisting on Western responsibility and agency are asking Afghans to live in false hope because the West cannot deliver change. Centreing Western responsibility also allows neighbouring states to pretend moral immunity from this disaster for women’s humanity.
Many might disagree with this last point and argue that NATO’s war in Afghanistan gives the West a particular responsibility for humanitarian repair in Afghanistan today. But this responsibility does not hold if the West is an unacceptable power, or if the process of repair requires international agencies to inflict moral damage on themselves by violating one of their deepest values – gender justice.
The last two centuries of Western interference in Afghanistan have proved that it is only really Afghans who change Afghanistan, and only they who can find an appropriate form of gender justice in Afghan society. In the meantime, many international agencies may find their aid budgets more welcome and more fairly spent preventing starvation in East Africa.’
[This post is written by Hugo Slim in an individual capacity, and does not represent the views of Oxfam]Good update by Thea Hilhorst here
The world community is accountable and responsible for the current ……………………….of a whole country inhabitated civillian including women, men, and children.
This article is certainly interesting and makes valid points. But we do have a need to better grasp the complexity.
In other places, pursuant to persistent violations, certain countries have severed diplomatic ties (e.g. Canada/Iran), resulting in a stifling of information flow leading to less understanding of the local contextual evolution. Elsewhere, Iran has been expelled from UNW; Russia suspended from UNHRC; and there is recent pressure to boot Russia out of the OSCE and the UNSC.
But a factor which need be considered is that there are, indeed, governments which have such a psychology, such a grip on their own citizens that they simply do not care what other countries and organizations think, do not accept lecturing and threats from any other country or organization. So with such governments, is it best to withdraw support services “as punishment” and thereafter have less communication and decreased understanding of the contexts? Or might there be benefit of retaining some—even diminished, but sustained—relationship, so that communication and understanding might improve, leading to parallel improvements in social spheres?
I admit that this is not an either or issue; but I simply wish to ensure that individuals and organizations seriously consider both the consequences of withdrawal as well as the potential of some level of continuing relationship.
A thought-provoking piece. And too important not to provoke a discussion. Please forgive my ‘whataboutism’ approach – I have a lot of sympathy for your position but would like to understand better…
1. You raise concerns about the slippery slope of compromise, of working with regimes or in places where humanity itself is desecrated as a matter of practice and policy. The classic humanitarian dilemma. Here, your resolution of that dilemma seems to rest on this desecration being “extreme” to a point beyond which you are willing to compromise. So how do you deal with the slippery slope in your solution? There are no shortages of extreme contexts or causes worthy of the highest level of attention. Yet one man’s “extreme” is another man’s ….
2. As you highlight, taking a stand will have serious consequences on ordinary Afghan communities, families, and women. Should agencies be taking this decision? Aid agencies and aid workers often think poorly when feeling ‘complicit’ – there’s a lot of self-interested bias in escaping ‘dirty hands’, no? Who, really, are we protecting? More importantly, what choice would Afghan people or Afghan women make? This is not a theoretical question. Aid agencies can ask. See for example Ground Truth Solutions’ Afghanistan report from June 2022, where we can learn how people feel about the aid they receive. Do aid agencies have a moral obligation to ask?
3. Let me say up front there is certainly no moral equivalency between the Taliban and the aid industry. Yet until very recently, the humanitarian sector did little to acknowledge or rectify its own misogyny, and while it allowed women to work in its institutions the gates to the highest decision-making positions were often only open to horses of a different gender (and color). The sort moral positioning you advocate might strike some as hypocritical. I’m worried that it might function as a form of “genderwashing”, so diminishing internal efforts in the direction of equality.
Author
Point 2 is particularly powerful Marc, will see if Hugo can respond
What makes this case a redline?
As a feminist, I agree with Marc. This appears quite hypocritical as the humanitarian sector has excluded women from key roles throughout most of its history. The ICRC being a clear example of this (see link below). The UN side is not much better; we have had only 1 female ERC and have yet to have a female SG. Why is it ok for the ICRC to have excluded women as delegates until the 1970’s but when this happens in Afghanistan it is now suddenly a red line?
What will happen to women and children, who are in Afghanistan now? Will humanitarian actors pulling out of Afghanistan actually put any pressure on the Taliban to change? I doubt it and I would not want to risk pulling out and stopping food aid to women and children, as a gamble or risky political bet that it might work. Why not ask local people, if they think aid organisations should continue their work in the current conditions? I am fairly sure they would say yes. I don’t see this as being complicit, but as being practical.
Humanitarians work in difficult contexts with constrained access caused by local governments all the time. Why protest now that women cannot be aid workers, why not before this? Are we really so shocked that this is the Taliban’s belief system, we knew this already. If 20 years of foreign military intervention did not work to replace the Taliban with a more gender friendly alternative option, how can humanitarians pulling out help? Women and children will continue to die and to bear the brunt of the suffering, this time in the name of “women’s humanity”, with humanitarian organisations too principled to continue to deliver aid under this regime? If women in Afghanistan are themselves making the argument that international humanitarians should pull out, I will listen. (Are they?) But who are we to say that we can best support women in Afghanistan by stopping humanitarian aid in the country now?
If western humanitarians pull out and millions stave this winter, what will we have achieved? Lets see what the united UN security council members can achieve in trying to reverse this. If those efforts do not work, then I think it is too dangerous to stop the aid. Pause the aid for now, if you want; but let’s be as pragmatic as we are principled.
Consequences of stopping aid: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-aid-taliban-women-ban-catastrophe/32213578.html
Women in the ICRC: https://www.icrc.org/en/document/women-icrc-film-archives#:~:text=Today%20there%20are%20as%20many%20women%20as%20men,Directorate%2C%20the%20Assembly%20and%20the%20Office%20of%20President.
75 years without a female UN SG: https://www.passblue.com/2021/02/23/the-un-must-select-a-female-secretary-general-now-not-later/
Journal article on women’s leadership in the humanitarian sector: https://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-020-00330-9
I agree!
I worked in Afghanistan during the first Taliban Emirate.
There is no magic wand to overcome the many threats that endanger Afghans but it should be clear that the principle of humanity should reign supreme. Self-righteous indignation, or the notion that turning our backs on the Afghan people – making them a pariah people because they are under the thumb of the Taliban – is the answer, puts in question the fundamentals of humanitarianism. Experience shows that there is no alternative to finding the ways and means to negotiate and navigate a way forward. This requires knowledge, commitment, dexterity, and intelligence as well as awareness that it may not work or that the situation deteriorates further. We should not, and cannot, wait for mortality rates to climb …and then resort to post-mortem analysis.
Afghanistan has always been and is a complex situation that needs to be understood from a variety of angles. This includes 4+ decades of warfare, deeply entrenched impunity and corruption that can be greatly attributed to the political framework and policies installed and promoted by Western backed governments during the period of occupation.
Profound levels of poverty that have marginalized the most vulnerable for centuries but deepened and spread as war and dysfunctional governance took its toll prior to the return of the Taliban to Kabul.
Notwithstanding important advances in access to health care and education since the beginning of this century, women and girls, are, invariably, among those most at risk when crises deepen and humanitarian need increases.
The current situation is distressing in the extreme. It is pushing a growing number of Afghans to resort to adverse coping mechanisms. These include the exchange of young girls in marriage and the sale of kidneys in a desperate bid to help the family survive as winter deepens.
More than half the population is in dire need of humanitarian support given internal and external policies. The nature and ramifications of Taliban Edicts are well known and debated but, for reasons that are totally unclear to me, there is little commentary on the decision of the US and some European allies to block the Central Bank, Da Afghanistan Bank from accessing the country’s external reserves – the property of the Afghan people – that are critical to currency stabilization and macro-economic policies that are fundamental
to import-export trade and, by extension, a functioning economy and banking sector.
See 2 relevant reports from last year and 2001:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/04/afghanistan-economic-crisis-underlies-mass-hunger
https://www.refworld.org/docid/48aa82df0.html
According to the Asian Development Bank, almost half (49.4%) of the people of Afghanistan struggled to survive below the poverty line in 2020. Since then, poverty has increased as has indebtedness, acute malnutrition and the number of children and others who are severely malnourished and in need of health care. At the same time, Afghanistan is suffering one of the coldest winters on record. This includes a projected temperature of minus 36 degrees next week, in Ghor where thousands are suffering near-famine conditions.
Humanitarians need to stick to humanitarian action that saves lives and mitigates however repugnant the Taliban regime and its fatwas or the immorality of manufactured poverty. Doing so requires operating in line with humanitarian values and principles. Humanitarianism is not an antidote for poisonous policies whatever their origin.
Norah Niland, HR advisor to the aid community, 1999-2002
When the Taliban ejected women aid workers from Afghanistan at that point the remaining aid workers were male and could no longer give Afghan women aid or even talk to them. At that point aid agencies had to decide if they would be complicit in Taliban doctrine and only give aid to men (hoping that some would share it with their wives, sisters and mothers) but never knowing if they would or leaving altogether. In the circumstances where the Taliban ejected the women aid workers, I think that it makes sense for Aid Agencies to leave Afghanistan (and the Aid Agencies treatment of women working for them is a different issue).
Thank you to everyone who has responded to this blog. Several of you know Afghanistan very well and have dedicated years of your life to people there, and most of you know much more about humanitarian operations than me.
I understand what you are saying and a large part of me agrees with those of you who argue that humanitarians should stay and deliver despite the immoral policies of the Taliban leadership, or, indeed, precisely because of them.
In all such difficult ethical discussions, I never imagine that I can see the whole truth or that there is the same right answer for everyone. I certainly never expect to be completely right but I hope to emphasise an important aspect of the picture.
Despite your replies, I still hesitate to support a business-as-usual humanitarian approach in Afghanistan today for three main reasons.
The first reason is the exceptional extent of this particular persecution.
The Taliban leadership’s discrimination and repression of women and girls is an especially heinous policy which I judge to be a nationwide crime against humanity. As I argued, humanitarians must stand up against this general persecution. To their credit, the UN are doing so. The UN’s carefully orchestrated diplomacy led recently by Sima Sami Bahous of UN Women, Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General, and Martin Griffiths as Emergency Relief Coordinator, is indeed challenging Taliban policy on the rights of all women and girls, and not just women humanitarian workers. This is important and right to do.
This diplomacy may encourage incremental changes of some kind but the UN and other humanitarians should not be easily placated by token concessions from the leadership, or a patchwork of pragmatism where some provincial and local leaders turn a blind eye to these inhumane edicts. The humanitarian position must remain that this is a nationwide persecution of women and girls, and all agencies should continue to publicly reject it.
But why, some of you ask, am I so alarmed by this particular persecution among so many other terrible crises? It is because I see in it an equivalence with European fascism’s early stages of its persecution of Jewish people, and with the persecution of black people in the United States before civil rights legislation. Like Jewish citizens in Germany and African Americans in the southern United States, women in Afghanistan are being denied education, jobs and the right to public space. But, because it is women, many people find it hard to see this discrimination in the same way. Some still think, like antisemitism and racism did, that women’s humanity is still up for negotiation in some way as not being fully equal. I think such thinking is deeply wrong.
Studies of persecution and genocide also tell us that what starts with exclusion from education, jobs and public space tends to end more violently. Those who resist will be hounded, imprisoned and lynched. I expect this will happen more and more to women in Afghanistan. In five years, we may well be reading reports of a policy of femicide similar to those we have seen in parts of gangland Latin America where women are deliberately and widely killed for being women.
And, of course, I have to ask how the world would react if the Taliban were imposing this level of persecution on men and boys by ending their education, their employment and their right to personal autonomy and public space. If it were happening to men, I think, large parts of the world would see this persecution more clearly for what it is – a crime against humanity and genocidal in some ways.
My second reason turns on the nature of suffering that will be produced by this persecution.
Humanitarians are largely concerned with hunger and economic poverty in their argument to continue business as usual if they can. Apparently, there are six million people on the verge of famine and 93% of the population living under the poverty line. I find these figures hard to believe in a country that has consistently received more foreign aid than almost any other over the last 20 years. I wonder if humanitarian assessments often find what they seek when looking for hunger and extreme conditions. I sense there may be significant “confirmation bias” in agency thinking and in deep habits of aid in Afghanistan which create a momentum of their own for large appeals. But I have never been to Afghanistan and I am sitting in Oxford, and so I may well be very wrong about this. It is suspicion not knowledge, but it makes me think Afghans will be more resilient than aid agencies suggest to their physical privation.
Either way, hunger and economic poverty will only be part of the way in which women and girls suffer from this persecution, and it may not be the most important part for them. The suffering of many women and girls will be deeply personal around their sense of self, their prospects and the terrible diminution of their lives by evil men. These biographical losses cannot be simply met by biological aid for better health. Many women may find it ultimately wrong that aid agencies are collaborating with their persecutors and building a new status quo around their discrimination while only dealing with their physical needs. In many human struggles, human life is more profoundly valued for its freedom, and humanitarians must be concerned with female freedom and not just bread alone. So, any aid programme cannot just be the neutral delivery of food and medicine. It must be accompanied by a firm objection to this persecution in every way possible.
My third reason is political about the longterm damage of incessant international substitution for bad governments.
In Afghanistan, as in South Sudan, international humanitarians are effectively running a partial UN Trusteeship for immoral and negligent national governments. The deal seems to be: bad politicians can stay in power and persistently violate a wide range of human rights, but international agencies will run the nation’s welfare system while they do so.
This strikes me as budget support taken to dangerous extremes, and policymakers must consider the consequences of this international policy. To my mind, there comes a point when it becomes counter-productive and politically stunting for millions of citizens even if it may prevent their physical stunting. International humanitarians must sometimes step out of the way and stop being a welfare buffer between a people and bad government. I sense it may be about that time in Afghanistan now, and it will be interesting to hear what Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury think about the similar situation in South Sudan at the end of their current visit.
Thank you again for responding to my blog. It is always sad if we cannot agree but probably important sometimes that we can’t.
Author
Thanks Hugo, really useful
Hi Hugh, love your work to make us all reflect, as always. However, I have questions on this one.
1. If our concern is for Afghan women, shouldn’t we be asking them what they want? Wouldn’t anything else be humanitarians further disempowering them?
2. Complicity with Taliban suppression of women is of course not acceptable. But complicity in their starvation or denial of access to health care isn’t either. Isn’t the ethical choice about which is the worse evil. But as per point 1, is it really first of all our choice?
3. The slippery slope argument mentioned by others? Thinking of DRC, for example, and the systematic / endemic sexual violence and child labour.
4. You appear to assume that humanitarian (as opposed to wider aid) agency withdrawals might have a significant impact on whichever “rogue regime'”, that it might effectively push a country to improvements one way or another. This is a political assessment that would require a high level of certainty (and would contradict most of my field experience). Have you, or anyone else documented where / how often this has been the case – or why it might be in Afghanistan?
If it is clear, then should independent humanitarians suddenly become the defining political actors – or should it be political actors (donor governments and the UN) making that call?
5. Lastly, what is moral about abandonment, vs staying engaged with those discriminated against? If I take your two historical comparators, those affected by slavery and those by the holicaust, would disengaging from those populations during their period of greatest suffering have been moral?
Would love your views on all this Hugh. Do stay in touch and keep provoking us!
All the best, Jeremy.
To understand the parameters for this position I would be fascinated to get your thoughts on operating in Gaza and whether the same holds true in that, or other similar, contexts?
Whilst Hugo makes some valid points, using Afghanistan (where he has never been) and South Sudan as examples are not the most consensual and convincing arguments, for the West to abandon their efforts, in fact I would argue that whilst thought provoking, this is not a great moral argument.
However as head of an International INGO in Afghanistan and liaising with the other INGOs in Afghanistan lets make a clear distinction between the NGOs and the UN and ICRC, whilst the UN was advocating male only programming at the beginning of the edict, the INGOs (well documented) were arguing against this and a suspension of activities until the edict is reversed, several global heads of NGOs came to Afghanistan to argue these points; from that advocacy, the IEA has made exceptions and we do expect the return of all female staff to the aid sector and not just in some of the sub sectors.
Given the circumstances of the last 40 years and the history behind the uncertainty in the wider region and the complexity of the whole issue, moral arguments from one side or another need to be based on the realities and not the armchair colonial thinking of Western lecturers. The issue in Afghanistan is not unique.
1. Where did this ideological thinking come from, it did not just appear overnight in Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere? Why did the West not tackle this at source?
2. Given that the coalition occupied Afghanistan for 20 years and achieved virtually nothing apart from the death of 10s of thousands of Afghans and many innocent coalition soldiers. Shouldn’t the next objective be political engagement to get Afghanistan back into the international community and save lives? Or don’t they matter?
Hugo whilst, I understand your arguments, you seem to put the complete blame on the IEA/Taliban, perhaps being a little more open minded and understanding, that the Invasion of Afghanistan very much like the Invasion of Iraq was based upon flawed or even criminally neglectful intelligence with a blood lust for revenge (and other sinister reasons to exploit resources etc.), against many innocents, when the guilty could have been apprehended without the destruction and mass killings of hundreds of thousands.
Whilst we do not agree with the ideology of Taliban, I would not abandon the Afghan people and I certainly would not absolve the West of their obligations.
Would be interested in hearing your response to David which for is a far more compelling argument, considering that the West is actively supporting and enabling an apartheid regime, in its efforts to cleanse a population.
Representing one of the largest NGOs in Afghanistan, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), let me add our perspective to this debate. SCA has 40 years of experience of working in rural communities. We managed to support women and girls during the Taliban regime of the 1990s and despite the current ban on women staff, we continue to do so even today.
Hugo Slim pinpoints a delicate dilemma that we and other humanitarian and development actors are grappling with. But where he argues that the right approach is for aid agencies to leave Afghanistan, SCA has reached the opposite conclusion.
Evidence to date on how the Taliban has responded to pressure from the international community shows that it is highly unlikely that the departure of aid agencies would make the country’s de facto rulers become human rights compliant. Instead, it would only increase the suffering of the Afghan population.
We are committed to principles of non-discrimination. In response to the ban, we have paused activities where we cannot guarantee equal access. We will not provide services that benefit men and boys only. But, most of our activities are still ongoing – with women staff.
Since Hugo Slim wrote his blog post, the NGO community has managed to carve out exemptions from the ban, sector by sector and province by province.
Women health workers are exempted from the ban, and this exemption applies to more than just health facilities. Our physiotherapy clinics and other activities targeting people with disabilities are also still fully operational with women staff. Midwives are still being trained to serve their local communities. NGO-supported primary schools for girls and boys are also allowed to stay open, without restrictions for women teachers.
To continue working in Afghanistan should not be interpreted as recognition of the Taliban, as Hugo Slim suggests. Rather, it is recognition of the rights and needs of the Afghan population, who should not be punished for the actions of a regime brought upon them by force. The withdrawal of international aid agencies would put millions of lives at risk.
We fully agree with Hugo Slim that only Afghans themselves can change their country. But we are not facilitating agents of change by cutting off their means of survival and their chances to get an education. A long-term strategy is required to support empowerment, so that people can take control of their own lives, organise and make their voices heard.
If we are serious about wanting to support Afghan women and girls, there is no alternative to a pragmatic approach. We urge the international community to support the following:
1. Continued non-discriminatory aid to Afghanistan. Suspension of assistance would have dramatic consequences for millions of people now dependent on humanitarian assistance for their survival. While organisations continue to negotiate with the de facto authorities on the resumption of activities with female staff, we urge donors to maintain funding to allow salaries and core costs to be paid, to enable a rapid resumption of activities when and where conditions allow.
2. Not limiting funding to humanitarian aid. Reducing aid to life-saving operations only, would be a short-sighted solution. Without a long-term strategy to address poverty and unemployment, the humanitarian crisis will only deepen. Livelihoods and education are key to breaking the cycle of poverty and supporting empowerment.
3. Support change from within. Education and civil society must be supported to promote long-term change. Policy makers and donors must support those inside Afghanistan who are defending women’s rights. Many educational opportunities and efforts to mobilise civil society, particularly of women-led organisations, will be wiped out if international funding seizes.
For a more in-depth assessment of this topic: https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/329-taliban-restrictions-womens-rights-deepen-afghanistans-crisis
Recruiting and using children under the age of 15 as soldiers which must certainly include in the capacity of suicide bombers, is prohibited under international humanitarian law – treaty and custom – and is defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court and the acceptance of state-parties to the Rome Statute discerns the sufficiency of State Practice.
In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict to protect children from recruitment and use in hostilities.
The Paris Principles on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict 2007 was adopted by Afghanistan yet the taliban regime deliberately groom children to be suicide bombers & child soldiers which undeniably deprive children of the Right to Education.
THE DEAD CAN’T BE EDUCATED!
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN A KNOWN TERROR ORGANIZATION WITH A NATION-STATE & DRUG CARTELS
The Medellín Cartel was known for using the unsuspecting homeless as suicide bombers.
NO ONE sees the cartel’s members leading Colombia de jure & de facto despite its then hold & position in the Global Narcotics Trade. The UN & its organs have never recognized the Cartel as a legitimate business organization. Members of the Cartel were never able to run Colombia despite attempts to do so by proxy.
TODAY, a known terrorist organization – taliban – known for programming, brainwashing, grooming & using children as suicide bombers & child soldiers, harboring other terrorist organizations, profiting off the proceeds of the Global Narcotics Trade is begging the international community & UN for recognition.
WILL THE UN & OTHER NATIONS RECOGNIZE COLOMBIA IF THE DRUG CARTELS WERE TO REIGN SUPREME ONCE MORE AS THE GOVERNMENT IN POWER?
The ONLY response will be in the negative.
https://upi.com/ar/7835726123600
In June 2023, I’d like to thank friends in the LWJ & FDD such as Thomas Joscelyn & Bill Roggio, the UN System & our Global Awareness Family for PROVIDING US WITH THE TRUTH! We have been Proven 110% Right All Along!
Several members of Al Qaeda are serving as leaders and key functionaries within the Taliban’s government, which it calls the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Among them are two provincial governors, the Deputy Director of the General Directorate of Intelligence, and a training director in the Ministry of Defense.
The details of the Al Qaeda leaders working in the Taliban government were disclosed by the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which issued its latest report on Afghanistan on June 9.
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2023/06/al-qaeda-leaders-are-prominently-serving-in-taliban-government.php