'Extreme humanitarian crisis' in Afghanistan amid drought, food insecurity & assistance restrictions
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00:00 We're now joined from Kabul by Neil Turner, the director of the Norwegian Refugee Council
00:05 in Afghanistan.
00:06 Neil, thanks so much for joining us.
00:08 We've just seen this France 24 report on some women continuing their education in secret,
00:13 but are those women very much the lucky ones?
00:15 Well, at the moment, there is a possibility of primary education in Afghanistan.
00:24 And I think the...
00:32 We appear to have lost Neil Turner there, but we'll try and come back to him in just
00:38 a minute.
00:39 Neil, are you with us?
00:42 Yeah, I'm here.
00:44 Can you hear me?
00:45 Yeah.
00:46 Yeah, I was saying that in Afghanistan, there is primary education for girls.
00:53 The authorities have banned the secondary education.
00:57 And it's extremely important that all women and girls in Afghanistan are allowed to work
01:04 and to receive an education.
01:06 And I think the work that was demonstrated there is one of the things that is necessary
01:10 in the future.
01:11 And what's life like then in Kabul these days?
01:14 Have you seen any of these celebrations going on this Tuesday?
01:18 What's the mood like?
01:19 Well, the celebrations are ongoing, but that's amidst a extreme humanitarian crisis that
01:26 we have here.
01:28 There is drought, there is food insecurity, there are difficulties in terms of the restrictions
01:34 on assistance being given.
01:37 And at the moment, we have 29 million people who are in need of assistance.
01:43 That's up from a million more this year alone.
01:49 And we have a situation where we have 15 million people in need of food assistance, but because
01:55 of cuts in funding, only 5 million of those are actually currently receiving assistance.
02:05 We see this situation as extremely dire, and we need assistance to be increased, funding
02:11 to be increased to be able to deal with the problems.
02:14 And what work are you able to still do there?
02:16 Specifically, have you been able to continue work as before?
02:20 Yeah, we are at a fully operational level.
02:24 We have the ability to work with our female colleagues through arrangements and exemptions,
02:31 which we've been able to work on with the authorities.
02:35 And so we are able to work in education, primary, as I said before, but also shelter, water
02:42 and sanitation, and to work on justice and so on and so forth.
02:49 So we're able to work, but we're hampered now a bit by the reduction in funding.
02:54 The overall humanitarian response program is only 25% funded.
03:00 And now having overcome some of the restrictions on us in relation to our female colleagues,
03:06 we're now facing a situation where we don't have enough money to actually operate at the
03:12 level we would like.
03:14 And the Taliban have of course hailed their success when it comes to security, but there
03:18 have been also a lot of attacks on civilians, some claimed by the Islamic State group.
03:23 Is this making your work more difficult as well?
03:25 At the moment, we are able to operate in more parts of the country than we were previously
03:34 before the Taliban took over.
03:37 Security is reasonable.
03:38 There are some threats, but that's not stopping us being able to reach most of the country.
03:46 We work in 15 out of the 34 provinces.
03:50 Neil Turner, Director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan.
03:54 Thank you very much for your time.
03:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]