Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The United Nations (UN) political chief who will chair the first meeting between Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and envoys from about 25 countries answered sharp criticism that Afghan women have been excluded, saying on June 26 that women’s rights will be raised at every session.

Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo stressed to a small group of reporters that the two-day meeting starting on Sunday is an initial engagement aimed at initiating a step-by-step process with the goal of seeing the Taliban “at peace with itself and its neighbours and adhering to international law,” the UN Charter and human rights.

This is the third UN meeting with Afghan envoys in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but the first that the Taliban are attending. They weren’t invited to the first and refused to attend the second. Other attendees include envoys from the European Union, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, Russia, China and several of Afghanistan’s neighbours, DiCarlo said.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as United States and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country officially recognises them as Afghanistan’s government, and the UN has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place and women can’t go out without a male guardian.

When Ms. DiCarlo met with senior Taliban officials in Kabul in May, she said she made clear that the international community is concerned about four things: the lack of an inclusive government, the denial of human rights especially for women and girls, and the need to combat terrorism and the narcotics trade.

“The issue of inclusive governance, women’s rights, human rights writ large, will be a part of every single session,” she said. “This is important, and we will hear it again and again, I’m sure from quite a number of us.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticised the United Nations for not having Afghan women and civil society representatives at the table with the Taliban.

Ms. DiCarlo described the meeting as a process. “This is not an inter-Afghan dialogue,” she stressed. “I would hope we could get to that someday, but we’re not there.”

The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry on June 26 reiterated the concerns they want to raise — restrictions on Afghanistan’s financial and banking system, development of the private sector and countering drug trafficking. Ms. DiCarlo said they also raised Afghanistan’s vulnerability to climate change.

She said discussions on the first day of the Doha meeting on Sunday will focus on how the world would engage with the Taliban to achieve the objectives of peace and its adherence to international law and human rights.

The assessment calls for a step-by-step process, where each side would respond to actions taken by the other.

On the second day, the participants will discuss the private sector, including getting more women into the workforce through microfinance projects, as well as counter-narcotics efforts, such as alternative livelihoods and support for drug addicts, she said. “Hopefully, it will achieve some progress, but it will be slow,” Ms. DiCarlo said.

She stressed that the meeting isn’t about the Taliban and doesn’t signify any recognition of Afghan’s rulers as the country’s official government. “That’s not in the cards,” she said.

“This is about Afghanistan and the people and their need to feel a part of the international community and have the kinds of support and services and opportunities that others have — and they’re pretty blocked off right now,” Ms. DiCarlo said.

Before the meeting, the UN political chief met with the Afghan diaspora. After the meeting on Tuesday, she said the UN and the envoys will meet with civil society representatives including women, and private sector representatives mainly living in Afghanistan.

The United Nations’ (UN) top official in Afghanistan defended the failure to include Afghan women in the upcoming first meeting between the Taliban and envoys from 22 countries, insisting that demands for women’s rights are certain to be raised.

UN special envoy Roza Otunbayeva was pummelled with questions on June 21 from journalists about criticism from human rights organisations at the omission of Afghan women from the meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on June 30 and July 1.

The Taliban seized power in 2021 as United States and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country officially recognises them as Afghanistan’s government, and the UN has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said that, in the face of the Taliban’s tightening repression of women and girls, the UN plans to hold a meeting “without women’s rights on the agenda or Afghan women in the room are shocking.”

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said, “The credibility of this meeting will be in tatters if it doesn’t adequately address the human rights crisis in Afghanistan and fails to involve women human rights defenders and other relevant stakeholders from Afghan civil society.”

Ms. Otunbayeva, a former president and Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan, insisted after briefing the United Nations Security Council that “nobody dictated” conditions to the United Nations about the Doha meeting, but she confirmed that no Afghan women will be present.

“UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo will chair the meeting,” Ms. Otunbayeva said. She will attend and a few of the 22 special envoys on Afghanistan who are women will also be there.

The meeting is the third UN-sponsored gathering on the Afghan crisis in Doha. The Taliban weren’t invited to the first and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said they set unacceptable conditions for attending the second in February, including demands that Afghan civil society members be excluded from the talks and that they be treated as the country’s legitimate rulers.

Undersecretary-General DiCarlo visited Afghanistan in May and invited the Taliban Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, to attend the upcoming meeting. The Taliban accepted and said they are sending a delegation.

“We do hope that delegation will be led by de facto Foreign Minister Muttaqi,” Ms. Otunbayeva said, but the Taliban may send another Minister.

“Just before the Doha gathering, there will be a hybrid meeting with Afghan civil society representatives from inside and outside the country,” Ms. Otunbayeva said. And on July 2, immediately after Doha, “we’ll be meeting all the civil society people.”

The Taliban have used their interpretation of Islamic law to bar girls from education beyond age 11, ban women from public spaces, exclude them from many jobs, and enforce dress codes and male guardianship requirements.

Ms. Otunbayeva said the upcoming gathering will be the first face-to-face meeting between the Taliban and the envoys and will focus on what she said were “the most important acute issues of today” — private business and banking, and counter-narcotics policy.

Both are about women, she said, and the envoys will tell the Taliban, “Look, it doesn’t work like this. We should have women around the table. We should provide them also access to businesses.” She added that “if there are, let’s say, five million addicted people in Afghanistan, more than 30% are women.”

Ms. Otunbayeva told the Security Council the UN hopes the envoys and the Taliban delegation will speak to each other, recognise the need to engage, and “agree on next steps to alleviate the uncertainties that face the Afghan people.”

The UN expects a continuation of the dialogue at a fourth Doha meeting later in the year focused on another key issue: the impact of climate change on the country.

Lisa Doughten, the UN humanitarian office’s finance director, told the council that “the particularly acute effects of climate change” are deepening Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis, saying more than 50% of the population — some 23.7 million people — need humanitarian aid this year, the third-highest number in the world.

“Extreme weather events are more frequent and more intense,” she said. “Some areas in Afghanistan have warmed at twice the global average since 1950” with the country experiencing increasing droughts and deadly flash flooding.

Ms. Otunbayeva said another outcome from the Doha meeting that the UN would like to see is the creation of working groups to continue talks on how to help farmers replace poppies producing opium with other crops, how to provide pharmacies with medication to help addicted people, and how to address crime and improve banking and private businesses.

As for what the UN would like to see, she said, “we need badly that they will change their minds and let girls go to school.” Ms. Otunbayeva said Afghanistan is the only country in the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that doesn’t let girls go to school, which she called “a big puzzle.” “Afghanistan has been very male-dominated and “we want to change the minds” of young people from such a traditional society towards women,” Ms. Otunbayeva said.

The humanitarian office’s Doughten told the council “the ban on girls’ education is fueling an increase in child marriage and early childbearing, with dire physical, emotional and economic consequences.” She also cited reports that attempted suicides by women and girls are increasing.

Sudanese refugees who fled the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and newly arrived ride their donkeys looking for space to temporarily settle, near the border between Sudan and Chad in Goungour, Chad. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

“A series of attacks by Sudanese paramilitary forces in the western region of Darfur raise the possibility of “genocide” against non-Arab ethnic communities,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on May 9.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with allied militias, have been widely accused of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes in their war with the regular Army, which began in April 2023.

“The war has killed tens of thousands, including up to 15,000 in the West Darfur town of El-Geneina,” according to UN experts.

The area is the focus of the 186-page HRW report “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El-Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan.” It describes “an ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab populations”.

From late April until early November of last year, the RSF and allied militias “conducted a systematic campaign to remove, including by killing, ethnic Massalit residents”, according to HRW.

The violence, which included atrocities such as mass torture, rape and looting, peaked in mid-June — when thousands were killed within days — and surged again in November.

Local human rights lawyers said they had tracked a pattern where fighters targeted “prominent members of the Massalit community”, including doctors, human rights defenders, local leaders and government officials.

HRW added that the attackers “methodically destroyed critical civilian infrastructure”, primarily in communities consisting of displaced Massalit.

Satellite imagery showed that since June, predominantly Massalit neighbourhoods in El-Geneina have been “systematically dismantled, many with bulldozers, preventing civilians who fled from returning to their homes”, HRW reported.

HRW said the attacks constitute “ethnic cleansing” as they appeared to be aimed at “at least having them permanently leave the region”.

The context of the killings further “raises the possibility that the RSF and their allies have the intent to destroy in whole or in part the Massalit in at least West Darfur, which would indicate that genocide has been and/or is being committed there”, it added.

‘Large-scale atrocities’

HRW called for an investigation into genocidal intent, targeted sanctions on those responsible and urged the United Nations to “widen the existing arms embargo on Darfur to cover all of Sudan”.

The International Criminal Court, currently investigating ethnic-based killings in Darfur, says it has “grounds to believe” that both the Paramilitaries and the Army are committing “Rome Statute crimes”, which include war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

And in December, the United States said that Sudan’s rival forces have both committed war crimes in their brutal conflict, accusing the RSF of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

“More than half a million Sudanese have fled the violence from Darfur into Chad, according to the latest UN figures. By late October, 75% of those crossing the border were from El-Geneina,” HRW said.

Around 400 km (250 miles) east of El-Geneina, all eyes are currently on El-Fasher in North Darfur, the only state capital not under RSF control. The United States has warned of a disaster of “epic proportions” if the RSF proceeds with an expected attack, as residents fear the same fate of El-Geneina will befall them.

“As the UN Security Council and governments wake up to the looming disaster in El-Fasher, the large-scale atrocities committed in El-Geneina should be seen as a reminder of the atrocities that could come in the absence of concerted action,” said HRW executive director Tirana Hassan.

UNITED NATIONS Russia was defeated in its bid to regain a seat in the U.N.’s premier human rights body by a significant majority in October 10th’s election in the General Assembly, which voted last year to suspend Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia was competing against Albania and Bulgaria for two seats on the Geneva-based Human Rights Council representing the East European regional group.

In the secret ballot vote, Bulgaria got 160 votes, Albania received 123 votes and Russia just 83 votes.

Russia has claimed that it has support from a silent majority, and even though 83 votes came from less than half the 193 U.N. member nations, there is certain to be a concern, especially by Ukraine and its Western allies, that Moscow’s support was that high.

“I think the Russians will be pleased that they persuaded a sizable minority of U.N. members to back them (which) suggests that Moscow is not a total pariah in the U.N. system, despite repeated Western criticism,” Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, told The Associated Press. “That said, the U.S. and Ukraine’s allies were still able to ensure that Albania and Bulgaria swept the contest for two seats. So, Kyiv’s friends still have a solid majority in the assembly.”

The only other competitive race was in the Latin America and Caribbean group where Cuba, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic defeated Peru for three seats. New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cuba didn’t deserve a place on the council because of systematic rights violations including harassment, arbitrary detention, and torture of dissidents but Cuba got the highest number of votes of the four countries – 146.

The other closely watched race was in the Asia group where four countries – China, Japan, Kuwait and Indonesia – were candidates for four seats. Some rights groups also campaigned against Beijing and the size of the vote was closely watched.

Indonesia topped the ballot with 186 votes followed by Kuwait with 183 votes and Japan with 175. China was last with 154 votes.

Human Rights Watch said last week that China’s rights record should disqualify it from the Human Rights Council. It pointed to last year’s report by the office of the U.N. human rights commissioner which said China’s discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

Two other regional races were also not competitive.

For the four African seats, Malawi got 182 votes followed by Ivory Coast with 181 and Ghana with 179. Burundi, whose rights record was also strongly criticized by Human Rights Watch, was last with 168 votes.

The two Western seats were also uncontested, and the Netherlands topped France with 169 votes compared to 153 votes.

General Assembly President Dennis Francis, who announced the results, congratulated the 15 winners, who will join the Human Rights Council on Jan. 1.

Louis Charbonneau, Human Rights Watch’s U.N. director, said: “U.N. member states sent a strong signal to Russia’s leadership that a government responsible for countless war crimes and crimes against humanity doesn’t belong on the Human Rights Council.”

“But because two regional slates lacked competition, China and Burundi will be joining the council next year alongside Cuba. Their abysmal rights records should have disqualified them,” he said, adding that China’s last-place finish suggests that if the Asia race was competitive it would have lost.

But the spotlight in this election was on Russia and its campaign to get back on the Human Rights Council.

Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the United States on October 9 of leading a campaign to prevent their return to the council.

“The main phobia of our American colleagues today is electing Russia to the Human Rights Council,” Mr. Nebenzia told a Security Council meeting called by Ukraine on last week’s strike by a Russian missile on a Ukrainian soldier’s wake in a small village that killed 52 people.

The United States and others sent letters to many of the 193 members of the General Assembly urging a vote against Russia, according to diplomats. Felice Gaer, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, was among the non-government letter-writers also urging Russia’s defeat.

At October 9th’s council meeting, Albania’s U.N. Ambassador Ferit Hoxha also urged those who care about human rights and “the credibility of the Human Rights Council and its work” to oppose a country that kills innocent people, destroys civilian infrastructure, ports and grain silos “and then takes pride in doing so.”

U.S. deputy ambassador, Robert Wood told the Security Council that Russia’s re-election to the Human Rights Council “while it openly continues to commit war crimes and other atrocities would be an ugly stain that would undermine the credibility of the institution and the United Nations.”

In April 2022, less than two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions on a U.S.-initiated resolution to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over allegations that its soldiers in Ukraine engaged in rights violations that the U.S. and Ukraine called war crimes.

Human Rights Watch last week urged U.N. members to deny a seat on the rights council to Russia, saying its forces in Ukraine continue to commit apparent war crimes, including unlawful attacks, and crimes against humanity such as torture and summary executions. President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner are also sought by the International Criminal Court for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, it said.

The Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace a commission discredited because of some members’ poor rights records. But the new council soon came to face similar criticism, including that rights abusers sought seats to protect themselves and their allies.

The council reviews the human rights records of all countries periodically, appoints independent investigators to examine and report on issues like torture and situations in countries like North Korea and Iran. It also sends fact-finding missions to investigate rights violations, including in Ukraine.

Under the council’s rules, its 47 seats are allocated to regional groups to ensure geographical representation. Members are elected yearly by the General Assembly for staggered three-year terms that begin Jan. 1.

In last year’s election, Venezuela, South Korea and Afghanistan lost contested races, but countries including Vietnam and Sudan, which have been accused of having abysmal human rights records, won seats.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the United Nations believes all countries elected to the Human Rights Council this year “have therefore earned their right to be there.”

“They then need to show and demonstrate while they’re on the Human Rights Council their respect for human rights,” he said.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) activists form a human chain to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, along a street in Dhaka on August 30, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Thousands of Bangladeshi protesters marched on August 30 demanding information on hundreds of people they say security forces have abducted during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s nearly 15 years in power.

Opposition supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies joined families of those missing to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, many with black gags over their mouths.

The government denies the allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those reported missing drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.

National elections are due in Bangladesh by the end of January, but rights groups and foreign governments have long raised concerns over efforts by Ms. Hasina’s government to silence criticism and stamp out political dissent.

“I am not just afraid… every single day I wake up, I am absolutely terrified,” said Humam Quader Chowdhury, a BNP official.

He said he had been detained by security forces for seven months.

Mr. Chowdhury told protesters in the capital Dhaka that, during his detention, he saw a senior official on television deny he was in custody.

Ten-year-old Mariam Bushra held a photograph of her missing father, opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem.

“I want the return of my father,” she said.

Human Rights Watch said security forces have committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Ms. Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain missing.

The others were later released, produced in court or reported to have “died during an armed exchange with security forces”, HRW said.

“Bangladesh authorities are fooling nobody by continuing to deny the reality of enforced disappearances, and instead are prolonging the suffering of families,” Julia Bleckner, HRW’s senior Asia researcher, said Wednesday.

Security forces are accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters and disappearing hundreds of leaders and supporters.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion security force and seven of its senior officers were sanctioned by Washington in 2021 in response to those alleged rights abuses.