(Reintroduced to clarify that it was the COP29 presidency that refused to comment)
By Mohammad Yunus Yawar, Charlotte Greenfield and Gloria Dickie
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan Taliban officials will attend a major United Nations climate conference starting next week, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, the first time they have attended since the former insurgents took power in 2021.
The COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, will be one of the highest-profile multilateral events attended by Taliban administration officials since they took control of Kabul after 20 years of fighting Taliban-backed forces. NATO.
The UN has not allowed the Taliban to take Afghanistan’s seat in the General Assembly, and the government of Afghanistan is not formally recognized by UN member states, largely due to the Taliban’s restrictions on education and freedom of movement for women.
Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said officials from the National Environmental Protection Agency had arrived in Azerbaijan to attend the COP conference. The Taliban took over the agency when they returned to power as US-led forces withdrew.
Taliban officials have participated in UN-hosted meetings on Afghanistan in Doha, and Taliban ministers have attended forums in China and Central Asia in the past two years.
But the COP Office of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has postponed consideration of Afghanistan’s participation from 2021, effectively leaving the country out of the talks.
Afghan NGOs have also had difficulty attending climate negotiations in recent years.
Host Azerbaijan invited officials from Afghanistan’s environmental agency to COP29 as observers, allowing them to “potentially participate in peripheral discussions and potentially hold bilateral meetings,” a diplomatic source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Because the Taliban is not formally recognized within the UN system as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the source said, officials cannot receive credentials to participate in proceedings from full member states.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency declined to comment.
The Taliban have closed schools and universities to female students over 12 years old. They also announced this year a set of far-reaching moral laws that require women to cover their faces in public and restrict their travel outside the home without a male guardian. .
The Taliban say they respect women’s rights according to their interpretation of Islamic law.
Afghanistan is considered one of the countries most affected by climate change. Flash floods have killed hundreds of people this year, and the country, which relies heavily on agriculture, has suffered one of the worst droughts in decades. Many subsistence farmers, who make up a large part of the population, face increasing food insecurity.
Some advocates have criticized the Taliban’s international isolation, saying it only harms the Afghan people.
“Afghanistan is one of the countries that is really lagging behind in terms of the needs it has,” said Habib Mayar, deputy secretary-general of the G7+, an intergovernmental organization of conflict-affected countries.
“It’s double the price they’re paying,” Mayar said. “There is a lack of attention, a lack of connection with the international community, and then there are increasing humanitarian needs.”
(This story has been refiled to clarify that it was the COP29 presidency that declined to comment)