{"id":19100,"date":"2022-03-30T09:44:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T09:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=19100"},"modified":"2022-03-30T09:44:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T09:44:43","slug":"afghanistan-world-bank-freezes-projects-over-girls-school-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/03\/30\/afghanistan-world-bank-freezes-projects-over-girls-school-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: World Bank freezes projects over girls’ school ban"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The World Bank has suspended four projects in Afghanistan worth $600m (\u00a3458m), after the Taliban banned girls from returning to secondary schools.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The projects’ aims included improving education, health and agriculture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They also had a “strong focus on ensuring that girls and women participate and benefit from the support,” the bank had said earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Last week, the Taliban\u00a0reversed a decision to allow the schools to open\u00a0following months of restrictions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Taliban said schools would only reopen after a decision over uniforms for female students had been made in accordance with “Sharia law and Afghan tradition”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The move has drawn international condemnation, while on Saturday protesters gathered close to the Ministry of Education in the country’s capital Kabul to demand that the schools be reopened.<\/p>\n

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The World Bank projects were targeted at giving women and girls as much access to services in Afghanistan, as men.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They are financed by the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which was frozen last year after the Taliban took control of the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the start of this month, the executive board of the World Bank approved a plan to use more than $1bn from the fund to support “urgent needs” including those in education, agriculture and health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Under the plan, the money would not be handed to Taliban authorities, and was instead to be distributed through United Nations agencies and aid groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“As a first step, the ARTF donors will decide on four projects of approximately $600m to support urgent needs in the education, health, and agriculture sectors, as well as community livelihoods,”\u00a0the bank said in a statement<\/a>\u00a0on 1 March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This $600m will be supplemented with additional allocations from the ARTF during 2022 as conditions allow,” it added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This phased approach is designed to be flexible and adaptive, recognising that the situation on the ground remains fluid.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The BBC understands that the projects will be restarted only when the bank is confident that its goals can be met.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Friday, a joint statement by officials from 10 countries, including the US and UK, described the Taliban’s actions as “profoundly disturbing”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The US State Department has also cancelled meetings with the Taliban, which were scheduled to take place in Qatar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Bank has suspended four projects in Afghanistan worth $600m (\u00a3458m), after the Taliban banned girls from returning to secondary schools. The projects’ aims included improving education, health and agriculture. They also had a “strong focus on ensuring that girls and women participate and benefit from the support,” the bank had said earlier. Last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":19121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4836,4342,147,6850,8348,7358,5777,2735,11583,11337,423,12210,12248,9643,12634,9246,10954,4341,10342,12309,705,5612,12085,96,11171,8552,6736,8810,8840,6047,5319,12605,7999,6348,3954,5320,36,2920],"class_list":["post-19100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-afghanistan","tag-agriculture","tag-aid","tag-ban","tag-bank","tag-banned","tag-bbc","tag-capital","tag-demand","tag-education","tag-female","tag-frozen","tag-fund","tag-health","tag-improving","tag-international","tag-kabul","tag-law","tag-men","tag-ministry-of-education","tag-money","tag-nations","tag-china","tag-protesters","tag-qatar","tag-school","tag-schools","tag-strong","tag-students","tag-taliban","tag-uk","tag-united-nations","tag-us","tag-will","tag-women","tag-world","tag-world-bank"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}