Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s de-facto Taliban rulers said they have reached an agreement with visiting US officials on an exchange of prisoners. … Following the September 13 meeting, the Taliban released photos of the meeting in Kabul involving US President Donald Trump's special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, and Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

The ongoing humanitarian response to the devastating Afghanistan earthquake disaster continued on Friday, although essential services have been cut for operational reasons following reinforced Taliban restrictions on women working with the UN, the global body said. “All of us at the United Nations are suffering from a reinforcement of the ban on females working with us…We are simply unable to operate without females,” said Arafat Jamal, UNHCR Representative to Afghanistan.

Despite the ongoing ban on girls’ secondary education, more than 90 per cent of Afghan adults support girls’ right to be in class, according to a new alert from the UN’s gender equality agency, UN Women. 

Mining, Belt and Road participation feature in trilateral meetings between China, Afghanistan and Pakistan in Kabul.

Explicit death threats have been made against dozens of Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, according to a new UN report, where their rights have been severely curtailed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

The United Kingdom set up a secret plan to resettle thousands of Afghans in Britain after an official accidentally disclosed the personal details of more than 33,000 people, putting them at risk of reprisals from the Taliban, court documents have showed.

The ICC said there were grounds to believe that supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the Taliban, had committed the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds against girls, women and "other persons non-conforming" with the Taliban's policy on gender, gender identity or expression, a statement from the UN court said. 

The UN General Assembly on Monday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution expressing deep concern over Afghanistan’s deteriorating humanitarian, economic and human rights conditions, urging the Taliban to reverse repressive policies and ensure inclusive governance. 

Afghanistan’s government has said that Russia had become the first country to officially recognise its rule, calling it a “brave decision”. The announcement was made on Thursday after Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, met Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, in Kabul.

Russia has accepted the credentials of a new ambassador of Afghanistan as part of an ongoing drive to build friendly relations with the country’s Taliban authorities, which seized power as United States troops withdrew from the country four years ago.