Earlier Tuesday, the UN rights chief warned of the “terrible” consequences such policies would have.
“No country can develop – indeed survive – socially and economically with half its population excluded,” Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.
“These unfathomable restrictions placed on women and girls will not only increase the suffering of all Afghans but, I fear, pose a risk beyond Afghanistan’s borders.”
He said the policies risked destabilizing Afghan society.
Turk warned that banning women from working in NGOs would strip families of crucial incomes as well as “significantly impair, if not destroy” organizations’ capacity to deliver essential services, calling it all the more distressing with Afghanistan in the grip of winter, when humanitarian needs are at their highest.
Several foreign aid groups announced on Sunday they were suspending their operations in Afghanistan.
Women have also been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa, and not allowed into parks.
“Women and girls cannot be denied their inherent rights,” said Turk.
“Attempts by the de facto authorities to relegate them to silence and invisibility will not succeed.”
