Delegates from Afghanistan and more than 30 countries have arrived in Doha to begin the third round of UN-backed talks aimed at integrating the South Asian country into the international community.
This is the first time the Taliban is attending the summit.
Who’s going to go there?
The Afghan delegation will be led by Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The Taliban also deployed government officials responsible for banking, trade and drug control.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will not attend. He has attended two previous meetings held since the Taliban took over in August 2021, but this time he will be represented by UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Rosemary DiCarlo.
Qatar’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Faisal bin Abdullah al-Hanjab, will attend, as will the US special envoys to Afghanistan, Thomas West and Lina Amiri.
What’s on the agenda?
The United Nations said the talks were part of an ongoing process aimed at a future where Afghanistan was at peace internally and with its neighbors, fully integrated into the international community and upheld its international obligations, including on human rights, especially women’s and human rights. Girls.
The Taliban, on the other hand, wants to discuss restrictions on the country’s financial and banking systems, a key challenge for private sector growth, and measures being taken to combat drug trafficking.
Among the Taliban’s demands is the release of approximately $7 billion in Taliban central bank reserves frozen in the United States. Measures to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers will also be discussed after poppy cultivation is banned.
Afghanistan is the world’s largest opium producer and has long struggled with the illicit drug trade. Large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine are also produced domestically. The United Nations estimates that about 4 million people in the country, or nearly 10% of the population, are drug users.
In April 2022, the Taliban introduced strict new laws banning the cultivation of opium poppies. A United Nations report said poppy cultivation and opium production plummeted by more than 90 percent in the seven months following the ban, cutting off key trades for thousands of farmers and workers.
Do these talks mean recognition of the Taliban?
This meeting does not imply formal recognition.
But the group welcomed the talks, which aim to bail out Afghanistan’s cash-strapped economy, expand ties with trading partners and tackle its drug problem.
“The Doha meeting will discuss an independent assessment of the engagement with Afghanistan, which will be submitted to the (United Nations) Security Council in November 2023,” a Qatari source told Al Jazeera.
The Taliban have refused to participate in the first round of talks in Doha in May 2023, arguing that their demands, including recognition of their emirate as the sole official representative of Afghanistan and assurances that their rule will not be criticized, have not been met.
When the second meeting was held in February this year, the Taliban said the invitation had arrived too late to allow them to attend, and UN Secretary-General Guterres said the Taliban had set unacceptable conditions, including demanding that members of Afghan civil society be excluded from the talks.
Another issue is the appointment of a UN special representative for Afghanistan, proposed by Guterres in December and later approved by the UN Security Council and ratified at its February meeting.
The United Nations Special Representative coordinates the work of the United Nations and serves as the Secretary-General’s political representative in the country to which he or she is appointed. The agenda for the third Doha conference does not include discussion on the appointment of a special representative for Afghanistan.
Will women also participate in the talks?
No. The conference organizers were criticized for not inviting women, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed “deep concern” about the exclusion.
“Failure to ensure participation will only further silence Afghan women and girls whose rights are already being violated.” It said so in a statement released earlier this week.
Human Rights Watch described the decision to exclude women as “shocking.”
Human Rights Watch Deputy Director Heather Barr strongly opposes the decision to exclude human rights from the agenda of the upcoming Doha Conference on Afghanistan.
She described the omission as “shocking”. pic.twitter.com/hQKUb23f4P
— Amu TV (@AmuTelevision) June 28, 2024
Women and girls in Afghanistan have increasingly been denied access to education and employment since the Taliban came to power in 2021, and their movements and presence in public spaces have been restricted.
In March 2022, the Taliban decided not to reopen schools for girls beyond grade 6. Girls and women are also barred from higher education. This is despite calls from some Islamic scholars and Muslim-majority countries to reverse the policy. In 2022, a Taliban official acknowledged to Al Jazeera that Islam gives women the right to education, work and entrepreneurship.
In 2022, the Taliban banned women from gyms and parks and from working with domestic and global non-governmental organizations. They also imposed a dress code requiring women to be covered from head to toe, with only their eyes showing.
What do women’s rights activists say?
An Afghan women’s rights activist, whose identity has not been disclosed due to security concerns, told Al Jazeera that Afghan women have been in a “strange and traumatic state” since the Taliban took over.
“Unfortunately, Afghanistan is known as a country where women are not allowed to study, develop and work. She said that whether you go to our province or anywhere in Afghanistan, no one will have a problem with women’s education or work.
She added that she felt “the whole world had turned its back on (Afghan women). They had given hope to Afghan women, but they had taken that hope away and turned their back on it.”
