The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday discussed Afghanistan's deteriorating social and economic situation during a meeting held through Türkiye's initiative Wednesday.
The OIC’s executive committee called on the Afghan interim government to review its ban on women working in educational and nongovernment organizations (NGOs). The committee decided to send a second delegation to Afghanistan to convey the OIC’s message on human and women’s rights to the Taliban.
The committee expressed concerns about the decisions of the interim government established by the Taliban in Afghanistan restricting women's right to attend schools and universities and prohibiting their employment in NGOs.
Following the decisions taken on women in Afghanistan and the latest developments, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu held meetings on the issue with his counterparts from Muslim countries.
The minister had telephone conversations with his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.
Çavuşoğlu highlighted that “the Taliban's decision to ban women from universities in Afghanistan has no basis in Islam.”
"This ban is neither Islamic nor humanistic. Islam encourages education," he asserted last month.
The developments in Afghanistan will top the agenda of the 49th OIC Foreign Ministers Council to be held in Mauritania’s Nouakchott on March 16-17.
The Taliban last month banned women from all universities in Afghanistan with immediate effect, the latest in a series of moves by the group since taking power in 2021 to massively restrict women's rights and exclude women and girls from public life.
The ban on women working in NGOs, announced on Dec. 24, forced a widespread shutdown of many aid operations by organizations that said they cannot and would not work without their female staff. Aid agencies warn that hundreds of thousands are already affected by the halt in services. If the ban continues, the dire and even deadly consequences will spiral wider for a population battered by decades of war, deteriorating living conditions and economic hardship.
Aid agencies and NGOs have been keeping Afghanistan alive since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. The takeover triggered a halt in international financing, a freeze in currency reserves and a cut off from global banking, collapsing the already fragile economy. NGOs have stepped into the breach and provided everything from food provisions to basic services like health care and education.
