Afghanistan: Possible implications for UK aid organisations working in Afghan
The British newspaper The Telegraph has reported that the UK Parliament will discuss proposals to “blacklist Afghanistan”, potentially allowing authorities to jail citizens for up to 10 years if they were found to have visited the country. This comes as Sam Mort from UNICEF Afghanistan reports, a British citizen (Scotland) has stated that the Taliban are now providing security details for aid workers on humanitarian convoys in the country, and that UNICEF, including some international staff members, will remain and cooperate with the Taliban in order to continue humanitarian assistance projects.
The UK, like many of the major donor countries to Afghanistan, is currently discussing how to disseminate much needed aid throughout Afghanistan. Although travel to Afghanistan is likely to be temporarily stalled for UK citizens for the time being, whilst the UK government assesses the Taliban’s commitment to human and female rights, it is highly unlikely to have a blanket ban on all citizens travelling to the country for either diplomatic reasons or humanitarian assistance. Indeed, the Government has just doubled aid to £286 million, meaning the country is now one of it’s largest bilateral programs. Therefore any such proposal – which has not been discussed or confirmed yet – will unlikely to include international staff of accredited aid organisations, though strict due diligence and governance SOPs would need to be followed, if the UK did decide to ban further entry to Afghanistan.