UN Personnel’s Pic With Taliban Flag Attracts Criticism. An Apology Follows

United Nations:

The UN has apologised for “a big lapse in judgement” after images surfaced of a few of its personnel in entrance of a Taliban flag in Afghanistan throughout a go to by deputy Secretary-Normal Amina Mohammed this week to the war-torn nation when she met the de facto authorities and expressed alarm over girls’s rights violations.

Ms Mohammed, the highest-ranking lady within the United Nations, together with Government Director of UN Girls Sima Bahous and Assistant Secretary-Normal of the Division of Political, Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations Khaled Khiari accomplished a four-day go to to Afghanistan on Friday.

Throughout the go to, the delegation met Taliban leaders in Kabul and Kandahar and conveyed their alarm over the current restrictions on training and work of girls and women throughout the nation.

Nevertheless, as Ms Mohammed was assembly the group’s leaders, images of some UN safety personnel in entrance of the Taliban flag drew criticism.

“That photograph ought to by no means have been taken. It clearly reveals a big lapse in judgment. It was a mistake and we apologise for it. And by way of that, I imagine the supervisor for these officers has spoken to them on this,” Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres, informed reporters right here Friday when questioned in regards to the go to and the images.

Haq stated the {photograph} was taken whereas the Deputy Secretary-Normal was assembly the de facto leaders in Afghanistan. Her safety had taken her to that assembly and have been ready subsequent door, he stated.

In a publish on Twitter, Head of Overseas Relations for the Nationwide Resistance Entrance of Afghanistan Ali Maisam Nazary stated the “@UN personnel in Kabul taking a photograph w/a terrorist group’s flag brings the United Nation’s impartiality & integrity into query.”

“We kindly ask @antonioguterres to research this matter & for @UNAMAnews to stop such insensitive actions that may tarnish its status,” Nazary stated in a reference to the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Nazary additionally posted two images displaying the UN personnel standing in entrance of the Taliban flag.

Main the high-level UN delegation on behalf of the Secretary-Normal, Ms Mohammed conveyed considerations over the Taliban’s current decree banning girls from working for nationwide and worldwide non-governmental organisations, a transfer the UN stated undermines the work of quite a few organisations serving to hundreds of thousands of susceptible Afghans.

“My message was very clear: whereas we recognise the necessary exemptions made, these restrictions current Afghan girls and women with a future that confines them in their very own properties, violating their rights and depriving the communities of their companies,” Ms Mohammed stated.

“Our collective ambition is for a affluent Afghanistan that’s at peace with itself and its neighbours, and on a path to sustainable growth. However proper now, Afghanistan is isolating itself, within the midst of a horrible humanitarian disaster and one of the vital susceptible nations on earth to local weather change,” she stated.

“We should do every thing we are able to to bridge this hole.”

The Taliban have issued an order to shut universities to feminine college students throughout the nation till additional discover, barred women from attending secondary faculty, restricted girls and women’ freedom of motion, excluded girls from most areas of the workforce and banned girls from utilizing parks, gyms and public tub homes.

Ms Mohammed and Ms Bahous additionally met with affected communities, humanitarian staff, civil society and different key actors, in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat.

“What is occurring in Afghanistan is a grave girls’s rights disaster and a wake-up name for the worldwide neighborhood. It reveals how shortly a long time of progress on girls’s rights will be reversed in a matter of days,” Ms Bahous stated, expressing UN Girls’s solidarity with Afghan girls and women and vowing to proceed amplifying their voices to regain all their rights.

“We now have witnessed extraordinary resilience. Afghan girls left us little doubt of their braveness and refusal to be erased from public life. They may proceed to advocate and struggle for his or her rights, and we’re obligation sure to assist them in doing so,” Ms Bahous stated.

In a press launch issued right here, the UN stated it and its companions, together with nationwide and worldwide non-governmental organisations, are serving to greater than 25 million Afghans who depend upon humanitarian support to outlive, and stay dedicated to staying and delivering.

The UN stated that the newest decrees issued by the Taliban banning girls from working for NGOs has pressured many companions to pause operations that may not be safely and meaningfully delivered.

Whereas the current exemptions to the ban launched by the de facto authorities are opening areas for humanitarians to proceed – and in some instances resume – operations, these stay restricted to few sectors and actions, the UN stated.

“The efficient supply of humanitarian help is based on rules that require full, secure and unhindered entry for all support staff, together with girls,” Ms Mohammed stated.

The go to by the highest UN leaders to Afghanistan adopted a collection of high-level consultations on Afghanistan throughout the Gulf and Asia. The delegation met with the management of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Islamic Growth Financial institution, teams of Afghan girls in Ankara and Islamabad and a gaggle of Ambassadors and Particular Envoys to Afghanistan based mostly in Doha.

The delegation convened with authorities leaders from the area and non secular leaders to advocate for the essential position and full participation of girls and rally assist for the Afghan individuals, the discharge stated.

It added that all through the visits, international locations and companions recognised the crucial position of the UN in constructing bridges to discovering lasting options, in addition to the urgency to ship lifesaving assist and preserve efficient engagement, led by the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan.

They requested that efforts be intensified to mirror the urgency of the scenario and careworn the significance of a unified response by the worldwide neighborhood. The necessity for a revitalised and lifelike political pathway was persistently highlighted and all remained agency on the basic rules, together with girls’s and women’ rights to training, work and public life in Afghanistan.

There was broad consensus that the area and the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation’s management on these points was crucial. The proposal of a world convention on girls and women within the Muslim World in the course of the month of March 2023 was additionally thought-about and agreed in precept, the discharge stated.

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)