UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Thursday calling on Taliban authorities to “swiftly reverse” all restrictive measures against women, condemning, in particular, its ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations.

The resolution, unanimously adopted by all 15 Council members, said the ban announced in early April “undermines human rights and humanitarian principles”. More broadly, the Council called on the Taliban government to “swiftly reverse the policies and practices that restrict the enjoyment by women and girls of their human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

The Taliban belittled the resolution, saying the decision to ban Afghan women from working for the United Nations was an “internal social matter”.

The Afghan foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday saying the resolution failed to respect the country’s “sovereign choices”.

“We remain committed to ensuring all rights of Afghan women while emphasising that diversity must be respected and not politicised,” it said.

“This is an internal social matter of Afghanistan that does not impact outside states.”

In its Thursday statement, the Council also urged “all states and organisations to use their influence” to “promote an urgent reversal of these policies and practices”.

The body stressed “the dire economic and humanitarian situation”, and the “critical importance of a continued presence” of the UN mission in Afghanistan and other UN agencies.

“The world will not sit by silently as women in Afghanistan are erased from society,” United Arab Emirates ambassador to the UN Lana Zaki Nusseibeh said.

Russia slams West

But despite his country’s vote in favour of the resolution, Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzia criticised the text, saying it did not go far enough, blaming the West. “We seriously regret and are disappointed that steps and a more ambitious approach and texts were blocked by Western colleagues,” he said.

“If you’re so sincere, why not return the assets you’ve stolen from the country and without any preconditions,” he said, referring to the $7 billion in Afghan central bank assets frozen by the United States after the Taliban took over the country in 2021.

In September, the United States announced the creation of a fund based in Switzerland to manage half the money.

The United Nations announced on April 4 that the Taliban authorities had banned Afghan women from working for UN offices countrywide, after in December banning women from working for domestic and foreign non-governmental organisations.

Several NGOs suspended their entire operations in protest, piling further misery on Afghanistan’s 38 million citizens, half of whom are facing hunger, according to aid agencies.

After days of wrangling, it was then agreed that women working in the health aid sector would be exempt from the decree, before the Taliban authorities’ ruling banning the Afghan women UN workers earlier this month.

The move sparked opprobrium from the West and a United Nations review of the world body’s Afghanistan operations, which is to last until May 5.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is organising a meeting in Doha next week with envoys from various countries to “reinvigorate the international engagement around the common objectives for a durable way forward on the situation in Afghanistan”.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2023