KABUL (Pajhwok): Humanitarian aid delivery to Afghanistan may not continue if the ban on women workers of local and foreign aid groups is not lifted, warns a senior UN official.
Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is expected to visit Kabul soon for talks on problems resulting from the restriction on female NGO staffers.
“Without women working, we can’t deliver for the people who are in fact the primary objects of humanitarian assistance for women and girls,” he said in an interview on Friday.
Speaking to the BBC, the British diplomat confirmed UN flights supplying cash for humanitarian aid into Kabul had already been suspended.
“We will do everything we can to be able to remain (in Afghanistan) and deliver. These are particularly difficult circumstances,” he said.
The world body was serving 28 million needy individuals in Afghanistan, the largest humanitarian aid programme in the globe, he noted, calling the Taliban ban a body blow to the UN capacity to deliver.
Griffiths rejected the allegation that the new Afghan rulers had benefitted from the humanitarian aid. All aid was monitored, audited, inspected and vetted.”
PAN Monitor/mud
