Taliban attends UN climate summit for second time
Kabul delegation travels to COP31 in Antalya as observers while no member state recognizes the government, the same UN that bars the movement from the General Assembly seats it at the climate table
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Afghanistan's Taliban officials will attend a UN climate summit for the second time as observers
independent.co.uk
Taliban officials will attend COP31 next week in Antalya as observers, the second UN climate summit to seat the movement since it returned to power in 2021. Rohullah Amin, head of climate change at Afghanistan's environment protection agency, confirmed the plans to the Associated Press; a Turkish official said the delegation would attend in observer capacity.
No UN member state recognizes the Taliban government, and the General Assembly has kept Afghanistan's seat closed — in part because of the movement's ban on girls' education beyond the sixth grade and its restrictions on what women can wear and where they can go. Two years ago the delegation attended the Baku summit for the first time; since then, the summit presidencies have deferred any decision on who represents Afghanistan, leaving Kabul outside the formal negotiations. Observers may sit in on meetings and discussions but hold no role in decisions on policy or goals.
What Kabul wants from the badge is money: access to climate finance for a country the UN ranks among the most vulnerable to climate change, facing drought, water scarcity, extreme heat and floods that have devastated a largely agricultural economy. The International Organization for Migration counted more than 1.6 million Afghans who left their homes between April and December last year because of climate impacts on their lives.
The critics split along an unusual line. Fawzia Koofi, the former lawmaker and women's rights activist who left Afghanistan after the takeover, has publicly opposed the movement's attendance. Sayedmuhammad Sulimankhil, executive director of the Kabul-based NGO Samsoor Watan, takes the opposite cut: "It's the Afghanistan community that's facing the climate consequences. It is not the government that's facing the consequences." He calls on the international community to keep climate finance non-political — support the population without endorsing the regime that rules it.
The arrangement lets everyone have it both ways. The same organization that refuses the movement a seat at the General Assembly issues it a badge in Antalya; the delegations that sanction Taliban ministers photograph them at the plenary; and a government that tolerates no dissent at home collects, one summit at a time, the appearance of being a state among states.
The summit opens next week in Antalya. The schools for girls past the sixth grade remain closed.