Although excluded from universities, Afghan women and girls could enrol in vocational schools. Now, without midwives and nurses, access to care for women becomes very complicated. When the ban was announced, the Taliban Minister of Health was in Beijing for a WHO-sponsored conference on traditional medicine.
Matuil Haq Khalis, head of Afghanistan’s environmental protection agency, called on the international community for support; for the past three years, the Taliban regime has been excluded from international fora. The intensity of floods, combined with periods of prolonged drought, is displacing more people internally, while agriculture is yielding less and less. Projects by UN agencies cover only one province in three.
A Taliban minister and the Iranian ambassador met in Kabul to discuss the return of Afghans to their country of origin, with an Afghan delegation set to travel to the Iranian capital. An NGO reported the recent killing by Iranian border guards of Afghan migrants (260 dead and wounded, according to some sources).
Several families have reported that it is increasingly hard for them to enrol their children, despite having papers certifying their refugee status. Millions of people, including many children, have already been sent back while the campaign to expel more continues to intensify. The first 10 km of a wall that will divide the two countries has been built.
Worldwide, the virus, which can cause paralysis in infants and children, is unchecked only in these two countries. In Afghanistan, the Taliban no longer want door-to-door campaigns fearing for their own safety. In Pakistan workers continue to be victims of terrorist attacks and families are still very wary of vaccines.
Today's news: Defying CPI arrest warrant, Putin visiting Mongolia to strengthen economic and industrial relations; 1School bus crashes into a group of parents and children outside a school in Shandong, 11 dead; Explosion on the south-western outskirts of Kabul, six dead and 13 injured; Flooding and mudslides caused by Typhoon Yagi killed 13 people in the Philippines.
