Two days after the ban, Catherine Colonna, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, denounced the new decision of the Afghan authorities.
France on Monday denounced the “obscurantism” of the Taliban after the Afghan government’s decision to ban women from working in NGOs, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“This new ban against women (…) demonstrates, once again (…) the obscurantism of the Taliban, specified the Quai d’Orsay before adding that this relentlessness against them is intolerable”.
Humanitarian aid in trouble
This Monday, 6 NGOs have already announced that they will suspend their activities in Afghanistan. “Women are essential to any humanitarian aid operation”, especially in Afghanistan where “only women can interact with women”, lamented one of them, ActionAid.
For the ministry of Catherine Colonna, “this decision seriously hinders the delivery of humanitarian aid, to the detriment of the Afghan population, to which many women work whose contribution is absolutely decisive”.
According to the United Nations and aid agencies, more than half of the country’s 38 million people need humanitarian assistance during the harsh winter.
Returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban banned women less than a week ago from attending public and private universities, for the same reasons. They had already excluded them from secondary schools.
