‘Like I’m in prison’: Afghan women aid workers lose hope after Taliban ban
- Once earning their keep as aid workers helping to renovate and build schools, thousands of women now live a threadbare existence confined to a chilly home
- Aid workers say female staff are essential in a country where rules and cultural customs largely prevent male workers from delivering aid to girls and women
Cooped up at home, Pari Sediqi spends her days worrying how she will feed her sick husband and six children now that women are banned from carrying out aid work in Afghanistan.
Add to that Kabul’s coldest winter in more than a decade, making warm clothes, fuel and food all the more crucial, and Sediqi is out of ideas about how to keep the family going.
“I was the sole breadwinner of my family in this critical situation,” Sediqi, 40, said by phone from the capital.
“Now who will pay for our food, warm clothing, heating, medications … Who?” she asked, with at least 78 Afghans already lost to the severe cold snap gripping the country.
It is a month since the Taliban administration ordered local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to suspend female aid workers until further notice, just days after it had banned women from attending university.
It said the orders, condemned globally, were justified as some women had not adhered to its interpretation of Islamic dress code.