The European Union must not normalise relations with the Taliban regime or put the lives of the Afghan people at risk

We at RAGAA condemn the meeting held on 23 June in Brussels between representatives of the European Commission, fifteen Member States and a delegation from the Taliban regime.

The meeting, publicly presented as a ‘technical’ discussion to address the return of Afghan citizens from the European Union, constitutes a deeply worrying step towards the normalisation of a regime responsible for some of the most serious human rights violations in the contemporary world.

An opaque meeting with an unrecognised regime

The European Commission invited five representatives of the Taliban regime to Brussels – de facto authorities whom the European Union itself has never recognised as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. On the contrary, over the past four years, the European institutions have repeatedly and strongly condemned the Taliban’s policies and the serious human rights violations committed under their rule.

Furthermore, this meeting is not an isolated incident. It follows a visit by a European Commission delegation to Kabul in January and forms part of a process that began last autumn, when twenty Member States called on Brussels to speed up the deportations of Afghan nationals without residence permits.

The lack of transparency surrounding this meeting is particularly worrying. The details of the talks have not been published, and only some details emerged following pressure from various media outlets.

The European institutions subsequently stated that the talks were limited to the return of Afghan nationals who had committed serious crimes or posed a threat to security. However, several media outlets that had access to the original invitation document pointed out that it referred, in much broader terms, to the return of Afghan nationals without the right of residence in the European Union, with no specific mention of individuals convicted of crimes.

This is a substantial difference and raises serious doubts about the true scope of the negotiations held with the Taliban regime.

A policy incompatible with international law

This meeting must be understood as part of a broader European Union strategy to increase the return of migrants to their countries of origin, a strategy recently reinforced by the entry into force of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum.

However, no migration policy can justify a breach of one of the most fundamental norms of international law: the principle of non-refoulement.

Set out in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and subsequently elaborated upon by numerous international instruments, including the United Nations Convention against Torture, this principle prohibits the expulsion or return of any person to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that their life, freedom or physical integrity would be at risk.

The case law of the European Court of Human Rights has further reaffirmed that this protection applies regardless of whether the person has been formally recognised as a refugee.

It is true that international law itself provides for very limited exceptions where a person poses a serious and proven threat to national security or has been convicted of particularly serious crimes. However, these exceptions require a case-by-case assessment and cannot be used as a basis for establishing general mechanisms for return to a country where the risk of persecution and serious human rights violations is widely documented.

Afghanistan remains a country where no one is safe

There is no objective basis for considering Afghanistan a safe country for return.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, warned last May that “the involuntary return to Afghanistan of persons at serious risk of human rights violations is contrary to the fundamental principle of non-refoulement under international law”.

The joint report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, No Safe Haven, documents numerous cases of forcibly returned individuals who were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and other reprisals by the de facto authorities.

Similarly, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) has concluded that Afghanistan cannot be considered a safe country due to the collapse of the rule of law, the absence of effective judicial protection and the high risk of persecution.

Those particularly at risk include women and girls, former officials of the previous government, members of the security forces, journalists, human rights defenders, members of civil society and LGBTIQ+ people.

A regime responsible for gender apartheid

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, Afghanistan has been experiencing one of the world’s most severe human rights crises.

The de facto authorities have imposed hundreds of decrees designed to systematically exclude women and girls from virtually all spheres of public life. They have banned girls from accessing secondary and university education, severely restricted their freedom of movement, eliminated their political and labour participation, limited their access to justice, and consolidated a system of institutionalised discrimination based exclusively on sex.

The United Nations and numerous international experts have repeatedly described this situation as genuine gender apartheid, a crime which RAGAA has consistently called for to be incorporated into international law.

Volker Türk himself recently summed up the situation with a powerful statement:

“Afghanistan is a graveyard for human rights.”

International justice confirms the gravity of the crimes

The gravity of these events has also been recognised by the international justice system.

On 8 July 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and for the President of the Supreme Court of Kabul, Abdul Hakim Haqqani.

The Court concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Taliban leaders are responsible for a systematic policy of gender-based persecution that has included killings, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearances and the deliberate deprivation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of women and girls.

These decisions further reinforce the impossibility of treating the Taliban regime as an ordinary political interlocutor.

A contradiction with the European Union’s own policy

The European Union itself has for years denounced the systematic violations committed by the Taliban and has played a leading role in international accountability mechanisms.

In March 2023, the Council of the European Union clearly set out the conditions for any engagement with the de facto authorities: respect for human rights, the formation of an inclusive government, guaranteed humanitarian access, the protection of women and the prevention of terrorism.

None of these conditions has been met.

In this context, negotiating mechanisms for the repatriation of Afghan citizens with the Taliban regime itself directly contradicts European human rights policy and represents a worrying step towards the international legitimisation of authorities responsible for international crimes.

It is no coincidence that the head of the Taliban delegation, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, described the visit as ‘historic’ and publicly announced talks to expand the regime’s consular services on European soil.

The European Union cannot sacrifice human rights

Border protection can never justify the violation of fundamental international obligations or the endangerment of people whose persecution is widely documented.

The European Union cannot tackle a migration crisis by collaborating with a regime that has made the persecution of women and girls a matter of state policy.

We at RAGAA – Raise Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan strongly condemn this meeting and any initiative aimed at facilitating returns to Afghanistan whilst the Taliban regime continues to commit serious human rights violations.

We urge the European Commission and the Member States to maintain a policy that is fully consistent with the Union’s founding values, to strictly respect the principle of non-refoulement, to reject any form of normalisation of the Taliban regime, and to redouble international efforts to recognise gender apartheid as a crime under international law.

The European Union’s credibility as a defender of human rights depends on it.