The UK government has appointed Stephen Doughty as Minister of State responsible for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Middle East, and North Africa. This appointment comes amid the ongoing restrictions imposed by the Taliban administration on women and girls and the continued humanitarian aid from London to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Mr. Doughty, who began his role on July 21, wrote in a message on Twitter that he will oversee the Afghanistan and Pakistan portfolios, sanctions, consular affairs, and crisis management. He also stated that his responsibilities include supporting British citizens abroad and cooperating with local governments and councils throughout the UK.<\/p>\n
According to a statement from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Doughty previously served as Minister responsible for Europe, North America, and Overseas Territories. He has also worked with humanitarian organizations such as World Vision and Oxfam and later acted as the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Labour Party.<\/p>\n
This appointment takes place while the UK continues to criticize the Taliban administration’s policies, especially the extensive restrictions on education, work, and social participation of women and girls, yet remains one of the main providers of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Richard Lindley, the UK’s special representative on Afghanistan, said last month that the country has allocated \u00a3154 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan in the past year. According to him, at least half of this amount was channeled through UN agencies and relief organizations to fund health services, food aid, and support for women and girls.<\/p>\n
The UK government has also announced plans to allocate \u00a3105 million annually to Afghanistan from 2026 to 2029. This aid is intended for health, nutrition, education, livelihoods, and support for vulnerable citizens, while the continuation of Taliban restrictions remains the main obstacle to improving the legal and social status of women in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UK appoints Stephen Doughty as minister overseeing Afghanistan amid ongoing Taliban restrictions and continued humanitarian aid efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}