UN official urges stronger international engagement with Taliban regime

Roza Otunbayeva acknowledged broad condemnation of the Taliban's restrictive policies but cautioned against disengagement

The Afghan Taliban's acting Refugee and Repatriation Minister, Khalil Haqqani. Reuters

The UN’s top official in Afghanistan on Thursday urged stronger engagement with the Taliban rulers, warning that isolation could deepen the country's crisis and harm its people.

“Across Afghanistan, many people tell us that they want us to engage more with the de facto authorities and to help them to engage more,” Roza Otunbayeva, the special representative for Afghanistan, told the UN Security Council.

She acknowledged broad condemnation of the Taliban's restrictive policies but cautioned against disengagement. International pressure has failed to reverse controversial decisions by the Taliban, but Ms Otunbayeva said continued engagement is essential.

“Pressure and condemnation do not seem to be working, and if pursued without forward-leaning principled engagement, it will lead to Afghanistan’s isolation,” she said. “Isolation is not the solution and we must continue to engage to build trust for the benefit of the Afghan people.”

Ms Otunbayeva said the Taliban have continued to push their strict interpretation of an Islamist system and their vision for Afghan culture, as shown by unprecedented restrictions on women and girls.

Since reclaiming power in August 2021, Taliban authorities have systematically dismantled women’s rights in Afghanistan. Girls are barred from schooling beyond the sixth grade, and new vice laws issued in August prohibit women’s voices and uncovered faces in public, further erasing their presence from public life.

The Taliban have even banned women from receiving medical training, jeopardising critical healthcare services in a nation already struggling with limited resources.

“This new restriction defies logic,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN. “This is not cultural and it's not religious. It is unfathomable. It's sick. It is heartless. It means these men, Taliban, are sentencing their mothers who birthed them, their sisters, their wives, their own daughters to die before their eyes if they become ill.”

The directive, said UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs Tom Fletcher, would prevent more than 36,000 midwives and 2,800 nurses from entering the workforce in the next few years, and “rates of antenatal, neonatal and maternal mortality could dramatically increase”.

“This is in a country where one third of women already give birth without professional medical support and in which preventable maternal complications claim the life of a woman every two hours,” Mr Fletcher said.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield said the US continued to engage with the Taliban through bilateral and UN-mediated channels to support the Afghan population. But she said the growing divide over political and human rights issues raised questions about the viability of continuing.

“We have engaged the Taliban bilaterally, as well as through UN convened meetings to try to find ways to support the Afghan people," she said. "But as the divide between us on political and human rights matters grow larger, it is difficult to see how we justify continued engagement, even on technical matters. Any engagement must be linked with a broader dialogue on human rights and a political road map as envisioned in UN Security Council Resolution 2721.”

Resolution 2721 underscores the Council's commitment to Afghanistan's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity. It also reaffirms the indispensable role of women in Afghan society, emphasising the necessity of their full, equal, meaningful and safe participation.