The European Union’s decision to host Taliban officials in Brussels on Tuesday has drawn widespread criticism from human rights activists, who note that members of the group were granted visas despite its documented crackdown on women’s rights since returning to power in 2021.
The discussions are planned to go ahead as part of Europe’s plan to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers. According to data published by the union, member states received around a million asylum applications from Afghans between 2013 and 2024, with roughly half approved.
The five Taliban representatives are permitted to spend only one day in Belgium, exclusively, per their visa conditions announced on Monday.
“Member states are looking into ways to return persons who have committed serious crimes and who are possibly a security threat. So this is the initiative that the [European] Commission is now following up on,” European Commission spokesman Markus Lammert told the EU’s daily press briefing on Monday.
Since its return to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban has steadily rolled back women’s rights, banning girls aged 13 and up from attending school and legalizing domestic violence and child marriage from as young as nine.
Taliban fired at modesty-law protestors
More recently, the organization has begun abducting women whom it claims have violated its hijab policy and opening fire against those demonstrating against their detention.
Afghan journalist Mursal Sayas told The Jerusalem Post that she wanted to see the global community pressure the Taliban into respecting human rights and that part of that pressure campaign would see the EU cancel the visas.
Additionally, she urged Germany to sever relations with the Taliban and remove its consul from the country.
“Countless individuals have been tortured and abused in prisons,” Sayas told the Post. “This ongoing situation represents a severe escalation, with children and women being beaten in the streets and kidnapped over the issue of hijab. Reports also indicate that the authorities are demanding money from families for the release of these girls and women.”
Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, also asserted that “Any engagement with the Taliban needs to prioritize protecting human rights and accountability – not deporting people to danger there.”
Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, commented, “The desperate scenes of people – including EU staff – fleeing Afghanistan are a recent memory. It is unconscionable that the EU would now try and deport people to Afghanistan, which has only become more dangerous in the meantime.”
Socialist Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Juan Fernando López Aguilar, according to The Guardian, also said he was “appalled” by the EU’s decision to host members of the Taliban, given the ongoing human rights violations.
“It’s absolutely an outrage and a total loss of faith and the credibility of the European Union that it can hold such a double standard,” he said.
MEP Hannah Neumann, of the European Free Alliance, along with 27 other MEPs, wrote to the EU’s leadership to complain that the talks violated terms agreed upon in 2021 and reaffirmed only months ago, which clearly stated there would be no normalization or implicit legitimization of the Taliban.
Outside of the Taliban’s repressive policies, Afghanistan is currently mired in a deep humanitarian crisis. According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 17 million Afghans are “food insecure.”
The International Rescue Committee also reports that hunger affects around 40% of the population.