Earlier this month, the Afghan Foreign Ministry announced their country’s participation at COP29. Taliban officials were in attendance at the United Nations Climate Conference which took place for 11 days in Azerbaijan. This is the first time they have attended the conference since the former insurgents took power in Afghanistan in 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

COP29 refers to the 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C.). Annual U.N. Climate Change Conferences are referred to as a “COP”, and these conferences compose the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change that unites almost every country on Earth. COP29 took place this year in Baku, Azerbaijan from the 11th to the 22nd of November. Put simply by the U.N.F.C.C.C., the COP is where nations come together to agree on actions that address climate-related issues, such as limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities around the world adapt to the effects of climate change, and hopefully achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Due to the developments of the Taliban insurgency in recent years, Afghan N.G.O.’s have struggled to attend climate negotiations. The Taliban are not formally recognized by the U.N. as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, mostly because of their increasing restrictions on women’s education and freedom of movement within the country. Consequently, the U.N. has not allowed Taliban officials to take Afghanistan’s place at the General Assembly, and cannot receive the credentials required to take part in conference proceedings as a full member state would. According to diplomatic talks highlighted by Reuters, Azerbaijan invited the Afghan environment agency officials to COP29 as “observers”, which would enable them to “potentially have bilateral meetings and participate in periphery discussions.”

The Afghan National Environmental Protection Agency posted on social media platform X that a technical delegation had gone to Baku to participate in COP29. According to an article by AP News, the head of the environmental agency, Matiul Haq Khalis, said that this delegation would use the conference to voice Afghanistan’s needs for access to climate-related financial mechanisms, address adaptation and mitigation initiatives, and collaborate with the international community on environmental protection and climate change.

The isolationism of the Taliban-controlled nation has drawn criticism from some advocates, claiming that it only harms the Afghan people further. U.N. organizations are reportedly drafting proposals to release almost $50 million in funding for Afghanistan in an effort to fight drought and flash floods, according to Reuters. The aid, if authorized, would constitute the first time Afghanistan has received environmental funding since 2021. In an effort to curb the extremist government, Stephen Rodriquez, U.N. Development Program resident representative for Afghanistan, detailed that U.N. officials would gather organizations to serve as an “on-the-ground partner” executing the climate initiatives, instead of disbursing the funds to the Taliban directly. The proposals are said to consist of $19 million from the U.N. Global Environment Facility, and two projects from the U.N. Development Program totaling $28.9 million. Representative Rodriguez makes an eye-opening statement in an interview with Reuters: “if one of the countries most impacted by climate change in the world cannot have access to international climate funds, it means [the system] isn’t working.” U.N. officials make it clear that they will uphold the COP goal of helping vulnerable communities mitigate the effects of climate in their countries. Despite Afghanistan’s setbacks in human rights and rise in religious extremism, its citizens are still in desperate need of international aid to mitigate the ongoing climate crisis.