KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The United Nations says it is preparing for the third meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan, scheduled to take place on June 30th and July 1st in Doha, the capital city of Qatar.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, May 21, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that the two-day meeting aims to increase international engagement with Afghanistan, under Taliban control, in a more coherent, coordinated, and structured manner.
He also mentioned that the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has extended an advance invitation to the Taliban authorities, who had refused to join the previous round, to participate in the forthcoming meeting of special envoys.
According to the UN spokesperson, the organization’s Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, visited Kabul on May 18 and met with Taliban authorities, including the regime’s deputy prime minister, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir and its foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, to discuss the upcoming meeting.
In a social media post following her visit to Afghanistan, Ms. DiCarlo expressed her commitment to working for the country, and advocating for the rights of Afghans, particularly the fundamental rights of women and girls.
“Just ended a visit to Afghanistan to continue preparing the ground for talks in Doha on the international community’s engagement with the country. Determined to continue to advocate for the Afghan people, including full participation of women in public life and education for all,” she said.
The upcoming UN-hosted meeting of special envoys will mark the third gathering of its kind focused on Afghanistan. The second meeting took place in February of this year in Qatar, the Gulf city that has become the center of diplomatic efforts since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Despite being invited, the Taliban, an unrecognized regime, chose not to participate in that meeting. They refused to join because their demands to be recognized as the “sole official representative of Afghanistan” and to talk directly with the UN Secretary-General were reportedly refused. The regime had objected to the participation of four Afghan civil society activists, a reservation which was dismissed by the UN head Antonio Guterres.
It is yet not clear who else other than the Taliban are invited to the upcoming talks, which are primarily a meeting of foreign envoys for Afghanistan.
Following the second meeting, the UN Secretary-General, who chaired the two-day gathering, said he would appoint a UN special envoy for Afghanistan as was recommended previously by Special Coordinator Feridun Sinirlioglou and endorsed by the UN Security Council last December.
While the Taliban welcomed the effort towards “more robust and increased engagement” with the UN, it objected to the appointment of a new special envoy as “unnecessary.” They emphasized that special envoys, “throughout contemporary history of Afghanistan & the world have not only failed to resolve any conflicts, but have complicated situations further via imposition of external solutions.”
Mr. Guterres has failed thus far to create such a new role, mainly because of objections from China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, who have conditioned their support of the initiative on the approval from the regime in Kabul.
