Afghanistan: protecting our female staff

Since the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has introduced a whole series of measures drastically limiting women's rights, their freedom of movement, their access to work and education as well as their participation in political life.

How has Médecins Sans Frontières reacted to these measures, which openly contradict its commitment to combating gender inequality in access to healthcare as well as in its own internal management? To which extent did MSF Afghanistan teams try and manage to resist the exclusion of women from work and public life? On which ground? What were the obstacles and dilemmas encountered, the reaction of Afghan staff, male and female, but also of their international colleagues, the expatriates, the so called International Mobile Staff (IMS) in MSF human resources jargon.

Surprisingly, the Taliban were not the toughest obstacle argues Lucy Butler, former human resources coordinators for MSF in Afghanistan, between May 2023 and May 2024. The main challenge was to resist the tendency of some of our international colleagues to be “more Taliban than the Taliban”…

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Episode produced by MSF Crash and hosted by Fabrice Weissman.

A glossary for listeners unfamiliar with MSF jargon:

IMS: International Mobile Staff (expatriates)
FAD: Field associative debates
OC: Operational Center, the term designates the five MSF sections running operations in Afghanistan (MSF Belgium, MSF France, MSF Holland, MSF Spain, MSF Switzerland)
OCBA: Operation Center Barcelona (MSF Spain)
During the interview, Lucy often mentions the role of Filipe. This is Filipe de Ribeiro, who was then MSF's country representative in Afghanistan.

Audio credit:

Music by AudioNetwork

Audio clips from:

Taliban further restricts women's rights, forcing aid groups to halt work in Afghanistan | PBS News Hour, 27 December 2022.

Women Banned from Nursing and Midwifery Courses in Afghanistan | Dawn News English, 4 December 2024.

With the frogs of Old Fangak, Jonglei, South Sudan.