FILE - Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva speaks to the media at a polling station during the presidential election in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,on Oct. 30, 2011. U.N. special envoy Roza Otunbayeva was pummeled with questions Friday, June 21, 2024 from journalists about criticism from human rights organizations at the omission of Afghan women from the meeting in Qatar’s capital Doha on June 30 and July 1.
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said that, in the face of the Taliban’s tightening repression of women and girls, the U.N. plans to hold a meeting “without women’s rights on the agenda or Afghan women in the room are shocking.” The meeting is the third U.N.-sponsored gathering on the Afghan crisis in Doha. The Taliban weren’t invited to the first, and Secretary-General Antoniofor 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.
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, 5 million Lisa Doughten, the U.N. humanitarian office’s finance director, told the council that “the particularly acute effects of climate change” are deepening Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis, saying over 50% of the population — some 23.7 million people — need humanitarian aid this year, the third-highest number in the world.