The Weight of their Absence: Afghan Women and the Doha Process
In the third round of the Doha Process, UN negotiations with the Taliban have struggled to balance engagement and inclusivity.
By Camille Haisell
The Taliban’s de facto government has imposed severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls since seizing power in August of 2021. Their policies have barred girls from secondary education, enforced strict dress codes, limited women’s access to employment, and restricted daily activities. In spite of sanctions and international condemnation and isolation, the Taliban have demonstrated no leniency.
In the summer of 2024, The United Nations met with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, behind closed doors. No Afghan women present, no media coverage, and no transparency – only the quiet negotiations of a process whose direction remains uncertain. Engagement and diplomacy were the words used, but the compromises are harder to name.
The UN has conducted three meetings in Doha to discuss the humanitarian, economic, and human rights disasters under Taliban rule. The Taliban were not offered an invitation to the first of these meetings, in May of 2023, and boycotted the second meeting in February of 2024 after their demand to be recognized as the sole representatives of Afghanistan was rejected. By June 2024, a third attempt took place, with another invitation extended to the de facto leadership. This time, with the Taliban at the table and Afghan women and civil society shut out. Their absence was not incidental, but rather a condition of meeting, set by the Taliban.
Economic stability, the opium trade, and counterterrorism were the priorities. Mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 2721(2023), the objective of these talks is to promote coordinated international engagement with Afghanistan, aspiring for a country at peace with itself and its neighbours. The broader goal was Afghanistan’s reintegration into the international community. But, this meant surrendering transparency and the inclusion of women. Their participation was relegated to a separate discussion. The exclusion sparked local protests and an international outcry. Still, the meeting, dubbed Doha 3, proceeded on the Taliban’s terms. At the Taliban’s request, the formal meeting agenda was limited to economic issues and narcotics control. Women’s rights issues were off the table. Wary of diplomatic stalemates, the UN made its choice: engagement over confrontation, access over inclusivity. The long term costs of this choice remain unknown.
Will the exclusion of key stakeholders lead to real, lasting change for Afghanistan, or will it reinforce a regime that has shown little interest in honouring its commitments? Further complicating matters is the ambiguous nature of the end goals of the Doha Process. While this process has been framed by the UN as a means of reintegrating Afghanistan into the international community, what it means in practice remains ill-defined, making it difficult to justify any concessions.
One compromise — the exclusion of Afghan women from these talks — directly contradicts international commitments, particularly the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, which requires the inclusion of women in peace negotiations. The UN’s yielding to the Taliban’s demands indicates a broader shift in diplomatic practice; the pursuit of practical outcomes — such as economic development or counterterrorism — is being prioritized over principles of inclusivity, transparency, and gender equality.
On the one hand, engagement provides a way to address crucial issues (humanitarian aid access, economic recovery, and regional stability) by opening a diplomatic channel with the de facto leadership. Through these talks, the UN and other international parties might gain leverage to address those critical matters. In theory, engagement shapes an environment where diplomatic talks can unfold, with the hope that such interaction will eventually pressure the Taliban to moderate their policies on women.
But these opportunities are accompanied by serious risks. The Taliban's militant and inflexible stance on women's rights is well-documented, and its track record of disregarding international commitments raises serious doubts about the efficacy of engagement. Critics of Doha 3 argue that the compromises made there are unlikely to advance improvements in the long term. The Taliban's historical disregard for human rights and the rights of women makes it hard to trust that any promises made in the course of the Doha Process will lead to genuine improvements on the ground.
Following the diplomatic engagement at Doha 3, the Taliban has only intensified its repressive measures. Weeks after the exclusive meeting, the Taliban issued the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces a lengthy list of restrictive provisions on women: requirements for women to wear clothing covering their entire bodies, bans on their voices being heard in public, and further restrictions on their movement without a male relative. Empowered by the new law, the Taliban's morality police have extensive authority to arbitrarily detain and discipline citizens, including physically, for so-called moral crimes without any requirement for due process. Human rights experts have described it as a system of discrimination and oppression amounting to a crime against humanity.
It must be questioned whether engaging with the Taliban is worth the cost of legitimizing them and undermining the UN’s credibility and commitment to human rights and gender equality. But isolation carries its own dangers: Cutting off dialogue and engagement could lead to limited humanitarian access, deprive communities of aid, and deepen the suffering of millions. Isolation could also restrict international influence over pivotal issues such as the opium trade, counterterrorism, and regional stability — all of which could threaten the international community.
The stakes of engagement, then, are irrefutably high. Inclusivity and transparency matter in theory, but in practice, other concerns take precedence. There is the question of aid. There is the question of security. While these principles are essential to long-term peace, the immediate need for humanitarian assistance and the prevention of broader regional instability may force impossible choices.
Ultimately, the Doha Process highlights the Gordian and irreconcilable nature of international diplomacy in Afghanistan under the Taliban. At some point, one begins to wonder what, exactly, engagement has accomplished. The doors were closed and outside, the repression sharpened and an architecture of control was reborn. On balance, the evidence tilts toward the conclusion that engagement in this form does not temper power — it emboldens it.
There are no easy answers, and the trade-offs involved might never fully resolve the dilemmas at play. But whatever happens in these meetings, Afghan women have made it clear that they will not be silenced. In Kabul, girls attend clandestine classes; Online, anonymous videos of women singing from behind blue burqas are posted and shared; Women all over Afghanistan pick up the pieces of a country shattered by war, and continue onwards.
Their political rights may be weakened, but their will to defend their humanity remains unshaken. While their voices are diverse and often divided, there is no doubt that Afghan women continue to forge their futures in their own myriad ways, and that the Taliban will not have the final word on their futures. In the reflections of one eighth-grade Afghan girl, “We fight alone to turn our nights into beautiful mornings. And we will succeed.”
Camille Haisell is a graduate student at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. She's interested in justice sector policy, with experience as a Policy Analyst in the fields of civilian oversight of law enforcement and victim services.