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Afghanistan

Humanitarian Access Working Group: Tracking Impact Report on the recent ban on women working with NGOs and INGOs in Afghanistan (13 - 30 January 2022)

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The Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Working Group and the Humanitarian Access Working Group (HAG) undertook a third round of the survey aiming to capture operational trends in the field following the directive banning women NGO staff from working. Three weeks after the ban, these were the key findings from the below snapshot, emerging from125 respondents surveyed across NGOs, INGOs and UN agencies:

  • Organizations are seeing an increased impact on their access to affected women with 93% of organizations seeing a change in their access to women.

  • The impact of the ban continues to be seen specifically in terms of organizations’ ability to assess affected women’s needs and receive their feedback on the humanitarian assistance provided

  • A higher number of organizations indicated that their women staff are not able to come to the office (from 65% in the last snapshot to 81% in the current snapshot)

  • At the same time, a number of organizations went from partially operating to fully operating (with 17% of organizations fully operating in the last snapshot, and 22% in the present snapshot), indicating that activities may be resuming, with men staff only.

  • Activities such as monitoring, as well as specific protection activities for women have had to stop, while the distribution of assistance and cash have been able to continue. This shows the continued impact of the ban on the quality of the response and on specific services for women.

  • While the exemptions are being used by partners to continue activities, they entail many conditionalities and cannot be used fully (55% say they are only able to use the sectoral exemptions partially). However, local negotiations either with the DfA or with community leaders have enabled some partners to resume the work with women staff