The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), announced that it had revised its 2023 budget for Afghanistan down to $3.2 billion from $4.6 billion earlier this year, primarily due to the Taliban de-facto authorities (DFA) banning women from working for NGOs and UN agencies.
In December 2022, the Taliban DFA announced a ban on Afghan women from working for NGOs, but up until April of this year, women were still allowed to work for UN agencies. OCHA’s recent statement revealed that the gender ban has added even more complexity to “an incredibly challenging protection environment,” which will make it more difficult than ever to deliver aid to the war-torn country.
Following the ban, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN aid coordinator for the country, visited Afghanistan where he noted that approximately 30% of local aid workers in the country were women and that they would not be replaced by men.
OCHA warned that 24 million people in Afghanistan, or 65% of the population, will be in need of life-saving assistance this year, nine million of which are classified as being on the brink of famine. Over the past five months alone, OCHA spent $942 million and delivered aid to 17.3 million people, but the new reduction in the UN’s budget for Afghanistan is sure to have long-lasting repercussions, especially after a recent plague of locusts devastated several northern regions, further compounding the country’s woes.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that the locust outbreaks will destroy 1.2 million tons of wheat in Afghanistan this year, a quarter of the entire annual harvest. Afghanistan is currently enduring its third consecutive year of drought, and parts of the country have not seen rain in many months. According to the FAO, conditions in Afghanistan are now “perfect” for locusts thanks to a combination of drought, overgrazing, and very limited control measures.
OCHA’s announcement that their aid budget to Afghanistan will be slashed by 40% comes on the heels of reports from Afghan female staff that Taliban DFA agents and sympathizers were regularly harassing and intimidating them. The Taliban DFA prohibition on women working for UN agencies means that it will be nearly impossible to reach the estimated three million women in need of protection against gender-based violence.
Furthermore, the Taliban DFA also banned all international organizations from working in education, leaving as many as 500,000 girls vulnerable to being denied access to any form of formal education whatsoever. Earlier this month, nearly 80 school girls were poisoned and hospitalized following an attack in Sar-e-Pul province, despite the Taliban DFA claiming that girls under 12 are still “technically” allowed to attend school.
Ongoing Challenges
Currently, approximately 85% of the population of Afghanistan lives in poverty, and nine in 10 families struggle to afford food. Much of Afghanistan’s previously well-organized locust eradication procedures fell neglected following the August 2021 ouster of the democratically elected government by a coalition of religious extremists known as the Taliban.
The takeover by the Taliban saw a dramatic drop in foreign aid, which had previously amounted to over $4.6 billion per year. Large sovereign donors such as the United States and Germany and even privately run NGOs are prohibited by international law from interacting with the Taliban or Taliban-related enterprises. The Taliban have been under UN sanctions since 2011, primarily due to their violations of human rights and their interference with the provision of humanitarian relief during their previous tenure as the head of the government of Afghanistan between 1994-2001.
A lack of international recognition for the current Taliban DFA as being the legitimate government of Afghanistan combined with existing UN sanctions have thus severely hampered efforts to deliver relief aid to the country since August 2021. The UN Security Council had to pass two resolutions (2678 and 2679) to set up the framework for an “integrated and coherent approach” for addressing Afghanistan’s challenges while still respecting existing prohibitions on working with members of the Taliban and their affiliates.
Currently, no fewer than 20 UN agencies, funds, and programs are operational in Afghanistan under the aegis of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Despite a strongly worded condemnation from UNAMA following the Taliban DFA’s prohibition of Afghan women working for NGOs and the UN, the agency has declared that it “cannot disengage despite the challenges” due to the overwhelming need for humanitarian aid in the country.
