KABUL: A yr on from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the senior UN official within the nation, Resident Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov, described his fears for women’ lives and known as for girls to play a full function in reviving the Afghan financial system.
Rights teams say that the Taliban have damaged a number of pledges to respect human rights and girls’s rights since taking on Afghanistan a yr in the past. After capturing Kabul in August final yr, Taliban authorities have imposed extreme restrictions on girls’s and women’ rights.
“Shortly before the Taliban takeover in 2021, I visited an orphanage in Kunduz, a city in the north of Afghanistan. I was heartbroken when I spoke with a young girl there who had lost her entire family the day before, following intense fighting between the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban,” stated Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Particular Consultant for Afghanistan with the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Since then, Alakbarov stated these challenges have grown exponentially and efforts to construct a secure future for youngsters like those I met final yr in Kunduz have develop into extra demanding.
“From hunger to chronic poverty, the scale of suffering in Afghanistan continues to rise across many areas since the Taliban advanced on Kabul last summer,” he stated.
Over half of the nation’s inhabitants now reside under the poverty line. Practically 23 million individuals are meals insecure, lots of them severely so, and greater than two million kids are affected by malnutrition. In June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the central area of Afghanistan, killing over 1,000 folks and pushing already susceptible communities to the brink.
“I am especially worried about Afghan women and girls, whose lives have changed unrecognizably since the Taliban returned to power last summer. Since 15 August 2021, we have seen a significant rolling back of their economic, political, and social rights and a worrying escalation in restrictive gender policies and behaviours,” he stated.
With out the fitting to training, work and freedom of motion, girls now discover themselves more and more relegated to the margins, he added.
In keeping with a brand new evaluation by UNICEF, holding women out of secondary college prices Afghanistan 2.5 per cent of its annual GDP. If the present cohort of three million women have been in a position to full their secondary training and take part within the job market, women and girls would contribute not less than USD 5.4 billion to Afghanistan’s financial system, the UN company stated.
UNICEF’s estimates don’t take into consideration the non-financial impacts of denying women entry to training, corresponding to upcoming shortages of feminine academics, docs and nurses, the following impression on lowering attendance for women in major college and growing well being prices associated to adolescent being pregnant.
The estimates additionally don’t account for the broader advantages of training, together with general instructional attainment, lowered youngster marriage and lowered toddler mortality.
Rights teams say that the Taliban have damaged a number of pledges to respect human rights and girls’s rights since taking on Afghanistan a yr in the past. After capturing Kabul in August final yr, Taliban authorities have imposed extreme restrictions on girls’s and women’ rights.
“Shortly before the Taliban takeover in 2021, I visited an orphanage in Kunduz, a city in the north of Afghanistan. I was heartbroken when I spoke with a young girl there who had lost her entire family the day before, following intense fighting between the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban,” stated Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Particular Consultant for Afghanistan with the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Since then, Alakbarov stated these challenges have grown exponentially and efforts to construct a secure future for youngsters like those I met final yr in Kunduz have develop into extra demanding.
“From hunger to chronic poverty, the scale of suffering in Afghanistan continues to rise across many areas since the Taliban advanced on Kabul last summer,” he stated.
Over half of the nation’s inhabitants now reside under the poverty line. Practically 23 million individuals are meals insecure, lots of them severely so, and greater than two million kids are affected by malnutrition. In June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the central area of Afghanistan, killing over 1,000 folks and pushing already susceptible communities to the brink.
“I am especially worried about Afghan women and girls, whose lives have changed unrecognizably since the Taliban returned to power last summer. Since 15 August 2021, we have seen a significant rolling back of their economic, political, and social rights and a worrying escalation in restrictive gender policies and behaviours,” he stated.
With out the fitting to training, work and freedom of motion, girls now discover themselves more and more relegated to the margins, he added.
In keeping with a brand new evaluation by UNICEF, holding women out of secondary college prices Afghanistan 2.5 per cent of its annual GDP. If the present cohort of three million women have been in a position to full their secondary training and take part within the job market, women and girls would contribute not less than USD 5.4 billion to Afghanistan’s financial system, the UN company stated.
UNICEF’s estimates don’t take into consideration the non-financial impacts of denying women entry to training, corresponding to upcoming shortages of feminine academics, docs and nurses, the following impression on lowering attendance for women in major college and growing well being prices associated to adolescent being pregnant.
The estimates additionally don’t account for the broader advantages of training, together with general instructional attainment, lowered youngster marriage and lowered toddler mortality.
