UN and top aid officials slam Afghan rulers’ NGO ban for women

“Banning women from humanitarian work has immediate life-threatening consequences for all Afghans,” they insisted.

Some aid programmes have already had to stop temporarily, owing to a lack of female staff, at a time when more than 28 million people in Afghanistan need “assistance to survive” the brutal winter, economic collapse and the risk of famine, the agency principals noted.

In a joint statement that followed Saturday’s…