Ottawa plans to finally stop blocking Canadian development aid to Afghanistan this year.
But when their new system is fully operational, the Taliban will have been in control of the country for about three years.
Humanitarian organizations say it is an endless delay for those who need help, especially as other countries acted more quickly to unblock aid flows.
“It’s extremely frustrating, if I can put it as kindly as possible,” said Asma Faizi, director of the Afghan Women’s Organization.
Her group supports Afghans newly arrived in Canada, as well as women living in Afghanistan and exiled in neighboring countries. She also runs an orphanage for girls in Kabul, which has been blocked from Canadian aid since the Taliban takeover.
“Canadian organizations that want to work inside Afghanistan are ready, willing and able to do so. But they are prohibited,” Faizi said.
As the law is written, aid workers are vulnerable to criminal prosecution if they pay taxes on their work or assets to Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
Doing so would be tantamount to providing financial support to an entity that Canada classifies as a terrorist organization.
The United States, Australia, the European Union and the United Kingdom created exceptions to their own counterterrorism laws by February 2022 to allow aid to flow, about six months after the Taliban took full control.
In June of that year, a cross-party committee of members of Parliament called on Ottawa to do the same.
Afghanistan has since faced a deteriorating humanitarian crisis caused by natural disasters, widespread food insecurity and an economic collapse while the international community largely shuns the current government.
The United Nations has determined that 23.7 million people in the country currently need humanitarian assistance.
Last June, Parliament passed a bill enacting a blanket exemption to terrorist financing laws for humanitarian workers providing vital aid in emergency response.
He also committed Ottawa to eventually create a permitting process for development workers, such as those who build schools, to apply for exemptions from anti-terrorism laws.
For World Vision Canada, the delay in establishing that process has meant continuing health and nutrition work in Afghanistan on a humanitarian basis, but suspending development projects aimed at promoting women’s rights.
The blanket exemption is simply not enough for some aid groups, said the group’s policy director, Martin Fischer.
Ottawa has yet to clarify what it defines as humanitarian work versus development work. The exemption that already exists only applies to the former.
“There is still this transfer of responsibility,” he said, requiring aid organizations to determine for themselves what they need to do to protect themselves from persecution.
He lamented that the government is not using long-standing definitions issued by Global Affairs Canada or the United Nations, which make the difference in terminology.
Faizi said the groups are trying to address a broad spectrum of problems – from hunger and disease to political repression – and remain confused about which projects should fit into each category.
For example, vaccines could be considered a long-term preventive aid. But its provision could also be seen as a response to a short-term emergency as the health system collapses and deadly diseases spread.
Mental health programs are typically classified as development work, but Faizi argued there is a strong case that stopping a trend of youth suicide in Afghanistan could be considered a humanitarian effort.
Faizi also said that by not taking quick action to allow permits for what it defines as development work, Ottawa appears to be going against its own feminist guidelines for international assistance.
That policy required flexibility in the provision of aid and acceptance of more risks to help women and girls in unstable countries.
“The problem arose when they decided that Canada was going to take this unprecedented route of creating a very complex and bureaucratic process,” he said.
A more flexible approach is needed, Faizi said, and one that recognizes that “some of the money” could fall into the wrong hands even as aid organizations try to save lives.
A Public Safety Canada report released last week says “efforts are underway to operationalize the licensing regime.”
He says the process requires sorting out privacy rules and ensuring the permitting process passes a fairness analysis.
Ottawa “intends to launch this regime by spring 2024 and will work to achieve full operational capacity by the end of 2024,” the report reads.
When asked for more details, a department spokesperson said applications will be accepted in the spring and that “staffing efforts are currently underway to further bolster the team that manages the regime.”
The process has lagged behind Ottawa’s own benchmark.
The federal Liberals budgeted $5 million for the just-ended fiscal year to review the permits. Another $11 million has been committed for the financial year that began this month.
Ontario Senator Ratna Omidvar championed the bill.
She said she is “relieved” that some aid is coming as a result of the humanitarian exemption, but hopes Ottawa will act quickly to ensure more organizations can help.
“I’m concerned about the amount of time it’s taking us to develop the systems and protocols,” Omidvar said.
“As long as public safety is at stake, things will take longer for smaller fish, always.”
Canadians have a special duty to the Afghan people, the senator said, and especially to women, after two decades in which Ottawa helped train teachers, journalists and politicians.
“Everything fell off the cliff” when the Taliban took power, he said.
“Canadians must understand, accept and acknowledge that we were complicit in all of this.”
Omidvar said Afghans feel betrayed and live behind “virtual bars.” Women cannot go to a park without a male guardian and take great risks to continue their education online.
“Using the word ‘tragedy’ is easy, but that is an abdication of our responsibility towards Afghanistan,” he said.
Canada is ignoring the thousands of Afghans who have since immigrated here but who have connections, skills and passion for their homeland, he said.
Afghan Canadians could help draw the world’s attention to their homeland, he added, and improve living conditions for those trapped under Taliban rule.
“I don’t think we can change history,” he said.
“But we can be on the front line in terms of humanitarian and development aid.”
Aid groups trying to support people in Afghanistan are at the forefront of a procedural change that, once it finally takes effect, could make humanitarian work easier elsewhere.
Fischer noted that the permitting process could come into play as Canadian groups seek to respond to crises in other regions run by terrorist groups, such as Yemen and the Gaza Strip.
“The world is too complicated for bureaucratic obstacles,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 27, 2024.