BAKU: The government aims to gain from a global financial deal being negotiated at COP29 in Baku, according to the first Afghan official to attend UN climate negotiations since the Taliban took power.
In the busy halls of the conference in the capital of Azerbaijan, where representatives from around 200 countries started two weeks of negotiations, veteran Taliban negotiator Matiul Haq Khalis, leading a three-person team, stood out Monday.
Attempts to join the previous COP (Conference of the Parties) meetings in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were unsuccessful by the Taliban-led administration, which is not recognized internationally.
Mukhtar Babayev, the president of COP29 and the ecology minister of Azerbaijan, requested his team to attend the discussions, according to Khalis, director general of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA).
The delegation is not a direct participant in the negotiations; rather, they are in Baku as “guests” of the hosts.
Khalis remarked, “I truly appreciate” Babayev’s offer and the Azerbaijani government’s assistance with visas. He told AFP via an interpreter that the goal of his team is to “transmit the message … to the world community that climate change is a global issue and it does not know transboundary issues.”
The Taliban have maintained that their political isolation should not prevent them from participating in international climate discussions, given that Afghanistan is one of the nations most at risk from global warming.
According to Khalis, when making decisions, COP29 participants should consider vulnerable nations like Afghanistan, who are most impacted by the effects of climate change. Khalis stated that his nation’s “main expectation” at COP29 is that “our people in Afghanistan also should access” such funding “as a right (over) climate change.”
However, at climate conferences where gender rights are always discussed, the Taliban’s treatment of women can be contentious.
When questioned about the gender issue, Khalis told AFP that women are also “boosted” by the implementation of climate change projects.
A request for comment on the invitation was not immediately answered by the COP29 presidency of Azerbaijan. Although Azerbaijan has not formally recognized the Taliban government, it did reopen its embassy in Kabul in February of this year.
