The international community needs to take urgent action to ensure Afghan women and girls across all ethnic and religious communities, in urban and rural areas, feel safe and have equal rights and opportunities to a life of dignity, peace, safety and justice.
To achieve this overarching goal, and to ensure that there is no regression in the context of the impending humanitarian crisis, we have stated four key outcomes and offered specific actions by international actors and specific actions by the Taliban.
Given the gendered segregation of society that the Taliban has already instigated, the delivery of aid to women and girls will be even more highly dependent on female Afghan aid workers and local women-led civil society organizations (CSOs). Such organizations have traditionally been the key conduits to reaching the most needy and marginalized sectors of society. They are more essential now.
We have offered 10 practical steps that the UN and other international humanitarian actors can take in designing and implementing their humanitarian response.
On July 15, 2019, the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Prevention Project—Organizing Against Violent Extremism, and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), convened a day-long expert roundtable on the margins of the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development.
