KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is scheduled to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in a meeting on Thursday, December 12, as announced by the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), UNAMA stated that Roza Otunbayeva, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, will brief the council on the situation in Afghanistan.
The meeting is scheduled for 10:00 AM New York time, or around 8:30 PM Kabul time.
No additional details about the upcoming meeting have been disclosed yet. However, it will be the fourth UNSC meeting on Afghanistan this year.
The most recent similar meeting on Afghanistan was held on September 18, during which UN Secretary-General António Guterres presented his quarterly report on Afghanistan, and the head of UNAMA briefed the council on the situation in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
In his report covering May to July, the UN chief highlighted widespread human rights violations committed by the Taliban, including extrajudicial killings and the detention of former government officials, severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls, and discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities. He also documented a 53% increase in security incidents during the reporting period.
During her last briefing to the council, the head of UNAMA expressed concern about the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, particularly ISKP, the regional affiliate of ISIS. She urged the international community to “find an appropriate mechanism to address this common concern.”
Otunbayeva also criticized the Taliban’s morality law, enacted in August, which imposes sweeping restrictions on the personal freedoms of women and girls. She said that the law undermined the UN-initiated Doha process, which aimed to facilitate more meaningful discussions with the ruling regime in Afghanistan.
“This law sends a negative political signal regarding genuine engagement – a signal that we cannot ignore. I have conveyed this clearly to my interlocutors in Afghanistan,” she said.
The Taliban has yet to meet any of the UN’s conditions, and there is no indication of their willingness to do so. The majority of their leaders do not support human rights values, particularly those related to women and girls, viewing them as Western concepts that conflict with their interpretation of Islamic values and Afghan culture.
