The UN Is Betraying Afghan Women
By putting security concerns above human rights, the global body and its international backers will get neither.
Crossing the line.
Source: AFP/Getty Images
It is the ultimate act of bad faith. The United Nations has decided to exclude women from its upcoming global conference on Afghanistan. Why? The Taliban, it seems, insisted on it.
The Islamic fundamentalist group wasn’t invited to the first meeting in May 2023, and refused to attend the next one in February because the UN wouldn’t accept the list of preconditions for its participation. “These conditions first of all denied us the right to talk to other representatives of the Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, I would say, to a large extent be similar to recognition” of the Taliban as the governing authority, Secretary-General António Guterres said at the time. So what has changed?