Taliban refuses to attend UN conference on Afghanistan

Qatar’s capital Doha saw on Sunday the initiation of a two-day United Nations-led conference ‘on the way forward’ in Afghanistan, without the Taliban, the de facto rulers, in attendance.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres organized the meeting of special envoys for Afghanistan from 25 countries as well as Afghan civil society members, including women, and representatives of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Participants will explore how to engage with the Afghan Taliban in a coordinated manner in light of an independent assessment of Afghanistan mandated by the U.N. Security Council last year.

The Taliban were also invited to Doha for meetings, however, the group refused to attend. In an official statement issued on social media platform X, the night before the conference kicked off, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that without the U.N. recognizing the Taliban as the only official representative of Afghanistan, attending the conference was “unbeneficial.”

In the lead up to the Doha huddle, Amnesty International, in a statement, urged participants to stop taking a “business as usual” approach regarding human rights in Afghanistan.

In a statement the organization emphasized that “The culture of impunity that enables the Taliban’s ongoing grave human rights violations needs to be addressed urgently.”