ASEF welcomes the announcement by UNICEF that all public school teachers will receive emergency cash for the months of January and February and thanks the EU for providing funding.
In many crisis situations, UN and international humanitarian organizations play a crucial role. They remain neutral and work with all conflict parties to support and advocate on behalf of civilians. In Afghanistan since the takeover, the UN is using its neutral stance to “stay and deliver” for the people. It has become the one institution that is both trusted by the international community and is able to work with the Taliban government. Now, many donors try and funnel money to Afghanistan via UN structures.
Lately, a few key successes have been achieved. A humanitarian financial corridor was created to supply the UN with Dollar cash in cooperation with DAB and AIB. World Food Programme, FAO, and others are expanding their operation all throughout Afghanistan, preventing large-scale death from famine.
On the 20th of February, 2022, UNICEF announced that with the help of the EU it is providing emergency cash support of 100$ to 194,000 public school teachers in Afghanistan for the months of January and February.
While these are welcome steps, working via the UN and so in fact creating new structures implies a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork. For instance, in order for UNICEF to be able to pay out the teachers, they have to verify the teachers’ identity, find a secure way to send the money to them, monitor their presence at their jobs, and be able to handle complaints. In short, it requires an education administration, that will be doing more or less the same work as the Afghan ministry of education.
In the medium to long run maintaining UN parallel structures will prove costly. The aim for Afghanistan should be to have some level of normalcy with a public education system that is actually run by the ministry of education. Temporary support is most appreciated but parallel structures should be avoided. Thus, UNICEF should work closely with the ministry of education.
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