UN fails to reach agreement to extend Taliban travel ban waiver | News

The US proposes reimposing the journey ban on seven of 13 Taliban members, and holding the exemption for six others.

A United Nations waiver permitting 13 Afghan Taliban officers to journey overseas expired on Friday, because the Safety Council failed to achieve an settlement on whether or not to increase the travel exemptions.

China and Russia have referred to as for an extension, whereas the USA and Western nations have sought a decreased listing of Taliban officers allowed to journey to protest in opposition to the Taliban’s rollback of women’s rights and failure to kind an inclusive authorities because it promised.

Beneath a 2011 UN Safety Council decision, 135 Taliban officers are topic to sanctions that embody asset freezes and journey bans. However 13 of them had been granted exemptions from the journey ban to permit them to fulfill officers from different nations overseas for peace talks.

In June, the 15-member UN Safety Council’s Afghanistan Sanctions Committee eliminated two Taliban schooling ministers from the exemption listing over the regime’s curtailment of ladies’s rights.

On the identical time, they renewed the exemption for the others till August 19, plus an additional month if no member objected.

If no member of the council objects to the journey ban by Monday afternoon, it would come into pressure for 3 months.

The US on Thursday proposed reimposing the journey ban on seven of the 13 Taliban officers and holding the exemption for six others, however limiting their journey solely to Qatar, the place US-Taliban talks have taken place, council diplomats stated.

A rival proposal

Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey stated that China, backed by Russia, has argued that the journey ban exemptions are “as obligatory as ever”.

Russia and China made a rival proposal that each one 13 Taliban officers be granted journey exemptions for 90 days, however solely to go to Russia, China, Qatar and “regional nations,” the diplomats stated.

Russia and China objected to the US proposal, the diplomats stated, and the UK, France and Eire opposed the Russia-China proposal, insisting that the exemption can’t proceed for all 13 officers due to the Taliban’s lack of progress on assembly its commitments on girls, forming an inclusive authorities and different points.

A spokesperson for the Chinese language mission on the UN, which at present holds the rotating presidency of the Safety Council, this week referred to as the Western place linking the journey ban to human rights “counterproductive”.

The exemptions are “wanted as a lot as ever,” the spokesperson stated, including that if reimposing a journey ban is all different members of the council need to do, “clearly they’ve realized no classes in any respect”.

‘Engagement with Taliban wanted’

Talking from Washington, DC, former Afghan ambassador to France and Canada, Omar Samad, informed Al Jazeera that engagement with the Taliban is required to assist the Afghan individuals.

“China and Russia are pushing for a continuation of the exemptions and even extending it to others, whereas others need them eliminated as a result of they suppose the Taliban has not come by means of with a few of their commitments,” stated Samad.

On Friday afternoon, diplomats stated, the US revised its proposal which might ban journey for seven of the Taliban officers and hold the journey waivers for six others for 90 days with no geographic limits.

Russia and China at the moment are contemplating that proposal.

Because the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as many as 700 individuals have been killed and 1,400 wounded although safety on the entire has improved, in keeping with a report final month by the UN political mission in Afghanistan.

It highlighted how girls have been stripped of a lot of their human rights, barred from secondary schooling and subjected to restrictions on their actions.