16 - Red lines for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan

As United Nations agencies and international humanitarian NGOs negotiate with the Taliban over the ban on women aid workers, this virtual roundtable explores where to draw red lines for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. Ought humanitarian operations be halted in response to the Taliban decree of 24 December 2022? Which new guidelines on this issue from the Afghan authorities would be acceptable? In this roundtable, these questions are explored from an ethical perspective: not asking what is strategic for humanitarian agencies but what is best for the Afghan people all things considered. As such, the roundtable is also an exploration of ethics of humanitarian action in general. This roundtable is the second in a series of discussions on ethics in humanitarian action. Held on 10 February 2023, the roundtable was organised by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies in collaboration with the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) and the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC). It relates to the project Red Lines and Grey Zones: Exploring the Ethics of Humanitarian Negotiations, led by Kristoffer Lidén at PRIO.