UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations said the 3,330 Afghan men and women it employs stayed home for a second day to protest the Taliban’s ban on UN female staff working in the country as it continued to press for the decision to be reversed.
The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on the Taliban’s action and pushed its calls for the ban to be overturned.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated the UN’s insistence that all UN staff are needed to deliver life-saving aid to millions and stressed again that “Afghan women will not be replaced by men.”
He also said the United Nations doesn´t want to get into a situation where it replaces Afghan women with international women, who are not banned from working in the country.
He explained that culturally it is always better to have nationals from a country delivering aid to their local population.
The UN has a staff of about 3,900 in Afghanistan, including approximately 3,300 Afghans and 600 international personnel. The total also includes 600 Afghan women and 200 women from other countries.
At the closed UN Security Council meeting on the Taliban ban, members were briefed by the secretary-general´s special representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, who led talks Wednesday with the Taliban´s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, to call for a reversal of its decision.
Russia´s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, the current council president, told reporters afterward that “everybody was appalled by the decision the Taliban made.”
