“It’s not surprising, but it’s very disturbing,” said Development Cooperation Minister Caroline Gennez (Vooruit) in response to the Taliban’s recent decision to ban female employees of NGOs in Afghanistan. “Where women are banned from public life, inequality only increases more”, says Gennez in ‘De Ochtend’ on Radio 1.
Gennez cites the example of the Norwegian NGO NRC, which has employed about 1,500 people – including 500 women – in Afghanistan. “They indicate very clearly that they cannot reach the population without female aid workers. Aid is only useful if it has an impact and is effective,” says Gennez.
stricter sentencing
The brand new minister says he understands the NGOs that are stopping their work in protest, but also calls on the international community to condemn the fundamentalist regime more severely at all levels, while at the same time keeping an eye on how they can continue their activities in Afghanistan.
According to Gennez, a unanimous response is now being demanded within the European Union and the UN. “In the interests of the population living under the brutal regime of the Taliban, the ban on going to school and the ban on female NGO workers must be lifted,” says Gennez.
UN
Belgium is mainly active in Afghanistan through the UN. “In this way we try to have an impact on the regime,” says Gennez. Something that is not obvious, according to the minister. “With such an extreme regime as the Taliban, any dialogue is virtually impossible. That is unreasonable at its best, but ordinary people, ordinary girls and women should not fall victim to it.”
Last Saturday, the Taliban announced that female employees of local and foreign NGOs in Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to come to work. Earlier that week, the regime also ruled that Afghan female students are no longer welcome at universities, in addition to a slew of other measures “that curtail the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan,” the G7 denounced in a statement.
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