The European Union hosted a delegation of Taliban officials in Brussels on June 22 for the first time since the group returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. The European Commission described the meeting as “technical” and focused on returns, while a Taliban spokesperson described it as a “historic visit” and a step toward regularizing consular relations with EU countries.
The negotiations took place despite EU awareness and frequent criticism of the Taliban’s horrific human rights record. The Taliban spokesman said discussions included securing a deal for “a dignified return process”—that is, sending Afghans back to Afghanistan.
International law prohibits governments from engaging in refoulement, the forced return to a place where someone would face a genuine risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment, or a threat to their life.
Afghanistan is not a safe country for any forced returns. There is compelling evidence that Taliban security forces have detained and tortured people who have been forced to return to Afghanistan. The Taliban have curtailed media freedom and arbitrarily detained critics and human rights defenders.
The Taliban have banned women and girls from secondary and higher education and have imposed severe restrictions on women’s employment and movement. Several EU countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands, grant Afghan women refugee status automatically, based on their nationality and gender.
The problems faced by people who return to Afghanistan are not limited to persecution and ill-treatment. Returnees from mass evictions in Pakistan and Iran often arrive with few resources, no housing, and limited access to basic services. They struggle to survive in a country facing economic collapse, foreign aid cutbacks, unemployment, drought, and broad repression.
There is a profound contradiction in condemning Taliban abuses while cooperating with them to deport people to danger. If the EU and its member states want their Afghanistan policy to be credible, they should halt all forced returns to Afghanistan and use engagement to press for rights and accountability, not to normalize forced returns to persecution and abuse.
