KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Heather Barr, Associate Director of Women’s Rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), says that the UN has made some “very serious concessions” to convince the Taliban to attend its third meeting on Afghanistan.
In a video clip shared on social media on Monday, June 17, Ms. Barr said that the UN’s concessions to the Taliban include excluding Afghan women from the meeting and omitting women’s rights from the discussion.
“It is shocking that the UN would do this at the moment when it is clear that the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban is the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world and that crisis is getting worse every day,” she said.
The third high-level UN-hosted meeting on Afghanistan, involving special envoys from various countries, is scheduled for June 30 and July 1 in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
Similar to the second round of the meeting, the UN has officially invited the Taliban to participate in this meeting. However, unlike the previous one, the Taliban announced yesterday that their delegation will attend.
The spokesperson for the Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that after reviewing the meeting’s agenda and participant list, they have decided to accept the invitation. However, he cautioned that any changes to the proposed agenda or participant list could lead to a change in their decision.
Unlike the previous similar meeting, the UN has not yet extended invitations to any Afghan women or members of Afghan civil society for this meeting. In the second round of talks, the UN invited three women’s rights activists and a journalist.
The HRW official went on to criticize the UN for ignoring reports of human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, including a “hard-hitting report” by its own special rapporteur for the country, Richard Bennett, which was presented to the UN Human Rights Council today, June 18.
“This report is important because it not only documents every deepening crisis women and girls are facing in Afghanistan under the Taliban abuses but it also recommends practical steps that states can take and should take to hold the Taliban accountable for these abuses and for the crimes that they are committing,” Ms. Barr said.
“What extreme frustrating, however, is that it does not seem that the UN itself is listening to special rapporteur at all,” she added.
