Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares, Spain\u2019s Minister of Foreign Affairs, described the Taliban\u2019s policies towards Afghan women as ‘cruel and criminal’ during the fifth meeting of European foreign ministers on feminist foreign policy. He stated that the Taliban are making a ‘criminal’ attempt to silence the voices of Afghan women.<\/p>\n
The two-day meeting, held in Spain under the slogan ‘Building Peace and Democracy,’ focused on strengthening gender equality and supporting democratic values. Albares emphasized that Spain has always stood alongside Afghan women and pledged that their voices will be heard in international forums.<\/p>\n
He highlighted the annual ‘Hear My Voice’ conference hosted by Spain\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which involves Afghan women activists living in exile. Additionally, one of the ministry\u2019s halls has been named after Afghan women, symbolizing Madrid\u2019s commitment to supporting the rights of Afghan women.<\/p>\n
Approximately 140 civil society organizations and feminist groups, alongside representatives from civil societies and women’s rights activists from nearly 60 countries, participated in this gathering. On the sidelines of the meeting, discussions focused on ‘gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan and the role of women in the peace-building process.<\/p>\n
Fawzia Kofi, a former member of Afghanistan\u2019s House of Representatives, spoke at the meeting about women’s role in the future peace process and described the current situation in the country as ‘very difficult.’ She warned that the policy of engagement and appeasement by some European countries with the Taliban administration has paved the way for intensified repression of women.<\/p>\n
Participants stressed that without meaningful participation of women, sustainable peace and democracy in Afghanistan cannot be achieved. They called for support for Afghan women to remain a priority as part of global commitments on human rights, gender justice, and peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spain\u2019s foreign minister calls Taliban’s policies toward Afghan women ‘criminal’ and urges continued global support for their rights and peace efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}