A Taliban spokesman delivers a press convention in Kabul on June 29, 2024. | Picture credit score: AFP
Taliban officers stated on June 29 that calls for over girls’s rights have been “points that Afghanistan” wanted to resolve, forward of United Nations-led compromise talks, the place the exclusion of Afghan girls has sparked protests.
The Taliban authorities, which has imposed restrictions on girls since taking energy in 2021 that the UN has referred to as “gender apartheid”, will ship its first delegation to the third spherical of talks beginning in Qatar on June 30.
Civil society representatives, together with girls’s rights teams, will attend conferences with worldwide envoys and UN officers on July 2, after the official talks.
Human rights teams have condemned the exclusion of Afghan girls from key conferences and the shortage of human rights points on the agenda.
Taliban authorities “acknowledge the issues affecting girls,” authorities spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated at a information convention in Kabul on the eve of the most recent talks.
“However these points are Afghanistan points,” stated Mujahid, who will lead the delegation.
“We’re working to discover a logical path to options inside Afghanistan in order that, God forbid, our nation doesn’t fall again into battle and discord.”
He stated the Taliban authorities would characterize all of Afghanistan on the conferences and, given their authority, they need to be the one Afghans on the desk.
“If Afghans take part by means of numerous channels, it implies that we’re nonetheless dispersed, our nation is just not but unified,” he stated.
The talks have been launched by the UN in Could 2023 and are aimed toward growing worldwide coordination in partaking with the Taliban authorities, who overthrew a Western-backed authorities once they got here to energy.
The Taliban authorities has not been formally acknowledged by any state and the worldwide group has struggled with its method to Afghanistan’s new rulers, with points of girls’s rights being a sticking level for a lot of international locations.
Taliban officers weren’t invited to the primary talks in Doha final yr and refused to attend the second convention, demanding to be the only real Afghan representatives to the exclusion of invited civil society teams.
That situation is met for the third spherical.
Mujahid reiterated that the Taliban authorities seeks constructive relations with all international locations.
Nevertheless, he added that “there can be no necessary or key discussions” in Doha and that the assembly is a chance to trade views, particularly with Western international locations.
The agenda will embody the struggle in opposition to drug trafficking and financial points, key points for the authorities of the impoverished nation.
“We’ve obstacles blocking financial improvement that needs to be eliminated,” Mujahid stated.
“If the economic system was good, then all the opposite issues could possibly be solved.”
