Taliban urges for removal of officials from UN blacklist, says report

The Taliban has once again urged the United Nations (UN) to remove the names of its members from the blacklist, arguing that instead of putting pressure on Afghanistan's de facto authorities, the international community should engage with them, reported TOLOnews.

After the Security Council failed to reach an agreement on whether to extend the travel exemptions, a UN waiver allowing 13 Afghan Islamic officials to travel abroad expired in August 2022.

"We can say that there are between 20 to 25 people who are on the blacklist and they were sanctioned. Some of them have died, of those who are alive, very few of them are now working in the government," TOLOnews quoted Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid as saying.

The inclusion of Islamic Emirate officials on the UN blacklist, according to Mujahid, violates the Doha agreement.

"We have said many times that pressure and force will not bring any results. The war of the past 20 years has proven it that the people of Afghanistan will not surrender to pressure. Engagement and understanding are better and negotiations are a good option," Mujahid added, as per the Afghan news agency.

The Doha Agreement notably is a comprehensive peace agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban for bringing peace to Afghanistan. It was signed in Doha in 2020. The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan was contingent on Taliban security assurances that Afghan territory would not be used as a launch pad for attacks against the US by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

Regarding the situation in Afghanistan, a political analyst, Torek Farhadi that the ongoing humanitarian crisis and deprivation of basic rights of women is the reason behind the sanctions on the Taliban.

"Ensuring the rights of women for education and work and including representatives that are not Taliban at the leadership level of Afghanistan after the intra-Afghan dialogue" is the reason for the sanctions, said Torek Farhadi, TOLOnews reported.

Furthermore, political analysts claim that the Islamic Emirate members' continued presence on the UN blacklist is due to their failure to meet the demands of the international community.

"I think it is part of the world's political pressure on the Islamic Emirate; until the Islamic Emirate observes the current system and current international laws," a political analyst, Saleem Kakar said in a separate statement.

Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the crisis in the country has increased manifold, making the lives of people extremely miserable.

Earlier this week, the UN experts in a statement said that the denial of women's rights to education by the Taliban in Afghanistan has no justification on any grounds as it has harmed not only them but also the country's future in a crucial way.

The UN experts stressed that the continued "denial of girls and young women's right to school in Afghanistan marks a global low in education, harming an entire gender, a generation, and the future of the country," TOLO News reported citing the statement.

"On 22 March 2023, schools should be reopening to girls across Afghanistan. Instead, it appears that for the second successive school year, teenage girls will be banned from resuming their studies - making Afghanistan the only country in the world that forbids girls and young women from attending secondary school and places of higher education," the statement reads as per the TOLO News report.

The UN experts called education an "enabling right" which they stressed is crucial for realising other human rights like rights to work, and an adequate standard of living.