More than $1 billion in aid pledged for Afghanistan as country faces ‘most perilous hour’
Speaking at a high-level ministers meeting on the crisis in Geneva, UN Secretary General António Guterres said poverty rates in Afghanistan had spiraled since the Even before the Taliban’s return to power, protracted conflict, poverty, back-to-back droughts, economic decline and the coronavirus pandemic had worsened an already dire situation in which 18 million Afghans — almost half of the population — were in need of aid,However, there are mounting concerns as to whether the Taliban can be trusted, and whether aid can get to the Afghans who need it, and not end up in the wrong hands.UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, who also spoke in Geneva on Monday, said the Taliban had already contradicted promises to uphold human rights, particularly regarding women and girls. Women have been ordered to stay at home, have been prohibited from going out in public without a male chaperone, and women and girls have had their access to education limited, with girls over the age of 12 barred from going to school in several areas, she said. “The country has entered a new and perilous phase,” she said. “In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere.”USAID noted that the environment in Afghanistan will need to be “conducive to the principled delivery of aid, including the ability for both female and male aid workers to operate freely” in order for the aid to be effective.CNN’s Sarah Dean and Kylie Atwood contributed.
