Day: February 20, 2022

UNICEF announced Sunday an emergency cash support effort for all public education teachers in Afghanistan for January and February, saying the move will allow continued access to education for all school-age girls and boys.

The European Union-funded payment, amounting to the equivalent of $100 a month per teacher, will benefit an estimated 194,000 male and female teachers across the country who have not been paid for six months.

UNICEF said in a statement that the agency and partners have taken the initiative in recognition of the “crucial role” these teachers in Afghanistan are playing in the education of around 8.8 million enrolled in public schools.

“Following months of uncertainty and hardship for many teachers, we are pleased to extend emergency support to public school teachers in Afghanistan who have spared no effort to keep children learning,” said Mohamed Ayoya, UNICEF’s country representative

Ayoya said UNICEF would need an additional $250 million to be able to continue supporting public school teachers and called on donors to help the agency fund the initiative.

Since militarily taking over the country in mid-August, the Taliban have allowed women to resume work in health and education, and opened private and public universities to female education, while secondary school girls are also back in school in about a dozen of the 34 Afghan provinces.

The new Islamist rulers have pledged to allow all girls to return to school by late March, blaming delays on financial constraints and the time it takes to ensure that female students resume classes in accordance with Islamic Sharia law.

Relief agencies say humanitarian needs have skyrocketed in war-torn Afghanistan since the Taliban took power last year and U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country.

The United States and other Western nations have halted nonhumanitarian funding to Afghanistan, amounting to 40% of the country’s gross domestic product, and blocked the Taliban’s access to billions of dollars in Afghan central bank reserves, mostly held in the United States.

The restrictions have pushed the fragile Afghan economy to the brink of collapse, worsening the humanitarian crisis stemming from years of war and natural calamities.

The United Nations is warning that nearly 23 million people — about 55% of the poverty-stricken country’s population — face extreme hunger, with nearly 9 million a step away from famine.

Tomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, while speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, said Washington was also playing its role in ensuring Afghan girls return to schools next month.

“We have before the World Bank a proposal to extend roughly $180 million in support of teacher stipends and in support of books and in support of refurbishment of buildings and so forth,” he said.

“But what do we need to see from the Taliban? We need to see them deliver on stated commitments to open and enroll women and girls in education countrywide… after Nowruz [the first day of Afghan new year] on March 20th,” West stressed.

No country has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. Before considering the legitimacy issue, the global community wants the Islamist group to install an inclusive government in Kabul representing all Afghan ethnic groups, ensure women’s rights to education and work, and prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil for attacks against other countries

Source: Voice of America

A German newspaper and other media on Sunday said a leak of data from Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, reveals details of the accounts of more than 30,000 clients — some of them unsavory — and points to possible failures of due diligence in checks on many customers.

Credit Suisse said in a statement that it “strongly rejects the allegations and insinuations about the bank’s purported business practices.”

The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it received the data anonymously through a secure digital mailbox over a year ago. It said it’s unclear whether the source was an individual or a group, and the newspaper didn’t make any payment or promises.

The newspaper said it evaluated the data, which ranged from the 1940s until well into the last decade, along with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and dozens of media partners including The New York Times and The Guardian.

It said the data points to the bank having accepted “corrupt autocrats, suspected war criminals and human traffickers, drug dealers and other criminals” as customers.

Credit Suisse said the allegations are “predominantly historical” and that “the accounts of these matters are based on partial, inaccurate, or selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank’s business conduct.”

The bank said it had reviewed a large number of accounts potentially associated with the allegations, and about 90% of them “are today closed or were in the process of closure prior to receipt of the press inquiries, of which over 60% were closed before 2015.”

As for accounts that remain active, the bank said it is “comfortable that appropriate due diligence, reviews and other control related steps were taken in line with our current framework.” The bank also said the law prevents it from commenting on “potential client relationships.”

Switzerland has sought in recent years to shed its image as a haven for tax evasion, money laundering and the embezzlement of government funds, practices carried out through the misuse of its banking secrecy policies. But those laws still draw criticism.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung published an excerpt from a statement by the source of the leak.

“I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral,” it said. “The pretext of protecting financial privacy is merely a fig leaf covering the shameful role of Swiss banks as collaborators of tax evaders.”

Source: Voice of America