MINISTER FOR FOREIGN Affairs Helen McEntee has hit out at the EU for its decision to welcome a Taliban delegation to Brussels earlier this year, saying it should not have happened.

Speaking alongside Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai during an event on women’s rights in Afghanistan, five years on from the Taliban takeover, McEntee said the EU’s welcome of the Taliban to Brussels “normalises” the repressive regime. 

Since 2021, the rights of women and girls have been systematically rolled back under the Taliban.

Girls have been banned from secondary education, age restrictions on marriage have been removed, and life for women at home and in public spaces in Afghanistan has in many ways become much less safe.

In June, a delegation of Taliban officials was hosted in Brussels for talks about a returns process for Afghans in the EU. The meeting was described as “technical” by the European Commission, but the Taliban heralded it as a “historic visit” and a step toward regularising consular relations with EU countries.

The meeting was criticised by Yousafzai today, who warned against normalising relations with the Taliban. 

“We should not give them any recognition, and Afghan women have to be in those rooms where decisions about their future are made. We cannot make any compromise on protecting the rights of girls,” she said.

Speaking alongside Yousafzai, McEntee said: “We didn’t support the recent actions which led to a delegation travelling to Brussels. I don’t think that should have happened.

“It normalises it… What’s changed for us to engage with them in the way that that happened? And so I think we shouldn’t in any way recognise the Taliban, we shouldn’t be engaging with them.”

Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman when she was 15, made the point that women and girls in Afghanistan have worked for decades to secure their rights, which are now being systemically dismantled. 

“And the world is now looking away, the world has sort of moved on.

“But I hope that opportunities like that we have today, we are able to bring attention to the activism of Afghan women and to their call to action, which is to recognise what’s happening there as a gender apartheid.

“This is systemic oppression against women and girls, and we have to call it what it is,” Yousafzai said. 

Asila Wardak (centre), pictured in 2024 Alamy Alamy

Speaking after Yousafzai and McEntee, Afghan human rights activist Asila Wardak urged the international community to take steps to support women in Afghanistan, whom she applauded for their courage. 

“What once shocked the world is becoming normalised, while the international response has become less urgent. So do not ask us again, What can we do for you? We have told you. Now please act on it,” she said. 

Wardak added: “Afghan women have carried this struggle with extraordinary courage and too often largely on their own. They have continued to organise, to propose solutions, and to defend their rights under relentless pressures. They have not retreated. The international community must not fail them now.”

She called for sustained funding for women’s groups within Afghanistan and urged UN member states to create dedicated scholarships and facilitate admissions into educational facilities for Afghan women and girls. 

Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that the rollback on women’s rights globally is a “very slippery slope”.

He said if the world allows one country to get away with this type of regime, it opens the door to it more broadly across the globe. 

Chris Rameriz Chris Rameriz

“Especially in the current gender pushback that we’re all experiencing, because it goes unfortunately even beyond Afghanistan,” he said. 

“We see a massive gender pushback, very well-connected, very well-funded. And it’s almost as if some were trying to turn the clock back, and not just in Afghanistan or in Asia Pacific, frankly in all continents.”