(CNN) Afghan men working for the United Nations in Kabul will stay home in solidarity with their female counterparts after the Taliban banned Afghan women from working for the global organization, according to a senior UN official.
Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Deputy Special Envoy, Permanent and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, called the Taliban’s decision an “unprecedented violation of human rights”.
“The lives of Afghan women are at stake,” he said, adding, “It is not possible to reach women without women.”
International UN personnel in Afghanistan will remain in their posts, he added.
The UN said on Wednesday it had been informed by the Taliban that Afghan women would no longer be allowed to work for the UN in Afghanistan and that the measure would be actively enforced.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Afghanistan, speaks at the UN compound in Kabul on April 5, 2023.
The UN condemned the decision and described the ban as “violating international law”.
Several women UN staff in the country had already faced restrictions on their freedom of movement, including harassment and detention, since the Taliban took power in 2021 – prompting the UN to order all staff of Afghan nationality of any gender not to enter the office until further notice , the statement said.
The UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, is working with the Taliban at the highest level to “settle for an immediate reversal of the order,” the statement added.
The United Nations said the Taliban’s move was an extension of an earlier ban, enforced last December, barring Afghan women from working for national and international non-governmental organizations.
“In the history of the United Nations, no other regime has ever attempted to ban women from working for the organization simply because they are women. This decision is an attack on women, the fundamental principles of the United Nations and international law,” said Otunbayeva.
Other figures within the organization also condemned the move, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calling it “absolutely despicable”.
After the Taliban banned female aid workers in December, at least half a dozen major foreign aid groups temporarily halted operations in Afghanistan — reducing the already scarce resources available to a country that desperately needs them.
The Taliban’s return to power preceded a deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan that exacerbated problems that had long plagued the country. After taking power, the US and its allies froze about $7 billion of the country’s foreign exchange reserves and cut off international funding – crippling an economy heavily dependent on foreign aid.
More than 28 million people in Afghanistan – about two-thirds of the population – are in need of humanitarian aid, the UN estimated in March. It added that many families are facing “catastrophic hunger” and the risk of starvation as food stocks run out months before the next harvest.
Since the Taliban returned to power, they have imposed a brutal crackdown on women’s rights and freedoms, banning women from working in most sectors, entering some public spaces such as parks or walking long distances without a guardian travel, and other daily restrictions. Last December, it banned women from attending university, nine months after it banned girls from returning to secondary schools.