A number of human rights organisations and civil society activists in France and Afghanistan have asked the French government to stop technical talks with the Taliban administration aimed at facilitating the deportation of Afghans who do not have legal residence status.<\/p>\n
In a joint letter, the groups stressed that the forced return of Afghans to a country where human rights are severely violated, especially against women and girls, could put their lives at risk and expose them to abuse, torture and psychological and physical harm.<\/p>\n
They also underlined the need to respect the principle of non-refoulement and warned that negotiations with the Taliban administration could amount to a form of normalising relations with the group, in conflict with France’s official policy of not recognising the Taliban. As a result, they said, the process could leave the Afghan migrant community in France living in greater fear of deportation.<\/p>\n
Among the signatories to the letter are Amnesty International France, the French Human Rights League, La Cimade and the Forum des R\u00e9fugi\u00e9s, which have called on the French government to stop deportations and strengthen legal routes for asylum, humanitarian visas and family reunification. They also called for consultation with civil society bodies before any decision on deportations is made.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, France’s foreign ministry said the ongoing talks are technical in nature and do not amount to recognising the Taliban administration. French officials also said the discussions do not include asylum seekers and women, although human rights organisations are concerned about ambiguities and the definition of people considered a “threat to public order.”<\/p>\n
France is not the only country that has entered into talks with the Taliban to facilitate the deportation of Afghans; Germany and Austria have also carried out direct deportations to Afghanistan in recent years. In addition, on 2 Saratan this year, the European Union hosted a Taliban delegation in Brussels for the first time, an event that drew negative reactions from human rights organisations and was seen as a step towards normalising relations with the Taliban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rights groups urge France to halt talks with the Taliban on deporting Afghans without legal status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24652","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=24652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}