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UN chief urges foreign community not to abandon Afghansitan
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the international community not to abandon Afghanistan and also called on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to expand opportunity and security for Afghans, uphold human rights, and demonstrate real commitment to be part of the international community.
Guterres also tweeted this week that “daily life has become a frozen hell for the people of Afghanistan.
“As a matter of moral responsibility — and regional and global security and prosperity — we cannot abandon them.
“They need peace. They need hope. They need help. And they need it now,” he said.
Addressing the UN Security Council on Wednesday, he said: “At this moment, we need the global community – and this Council – to put their hands on the wheel of progress, provide resources, and prevent Afghanistan from spiraling any further.”
According to him, Afghanistan has long been unfairly used as a platform for political agendas, geopolitical advantage, ideological dominance, brutal conflicts and terrorism.
“As a matter of moral responsibility – and regional and global security and prosperity – we cannot abandon the people of Afghanistan.”
He also highlighted the situation of women and girls and appealed for the release of women activists who were recently arrested.
Guterres also urged countries to suspend rules and conditions that constrict both the Afghan economy and lifesaving humanitarian operations.
“At this moment of maximum need, these rules must be seriously reviewed,” he said, emphasizing the need to pay public service salaries. He also welcomed the Council’s recent adoption of a humanitarian exemption to the UN sanctions regime for Afghanistan.
The Secretary-General underscored the need to “jump-start” the Afghan economy through increased liquidity, including by freeing-up frozen currency reserves and through cash injections.
“Our team in Afghanistan stands ready to work with Member States and others to establish accountability systems to ensure that funds go to the Afghan people most in need, and are not diverted,” he said.
On another note, Guterres appealed to the IEA to demonstrate real commitment to be part of the international community. “The window for trust-building is open. But this trust must be earned,” he said.
“I make an equally urgent plea to the Taliban (IEA) leadership to recognize and protect the fundamental human rights that every person shares,” Guterres said.
He further encouraged the IEA “to seize this moment and garner international trust and goodwill by recognizing – and upholding – the basic human rights that belong to every girl and woman.”
He warned that “Afghanistan is hanging by a thread” as millions of impoverished citizens struggle to survive amid deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
“We urge the Taliban (IEA) to seize this moment and garner international trust and goodwill by recognizing — and upholding — the basic human rights that belong to every girl and woman,” Guterres said.
He expressed concern about recent reports of arrests of women activists, saying: “I strongly appeal for their release.”
Over half of all Afghans face “extreme levels of hunger,” Guterres told the council, and “some families are selling their babies to purchase food.”
IEA officials recently held talks with Western powers in Oslo to address the humanitarian crisis, with Western diplomats linking humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to an improvement in human rights.
Wednesday’s session of the 15-member Security Council sought to clarify the mandate of the UN political mission in Afghanistan.
The mandate expires March 17 and must be reviewed to account for the Taliban’s return to power.
Meanwhile, the deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate Bilal Karimi said all opportunities “are available for Afghan women and there are no problems for Afghan women”.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
Sixty-one members of the U.S. Congress have urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision to halt immigration processing for Afghan nationals, warning that the move unfairly targets Afghan nationals following a deadly shooting involving two National Guard members.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the lawmakers said the incident should not be used to vilify Afghans who are legally seeking entry into the United States. They stressed that Afghan applicants undergo extensive vetting involving multiple U.S. security agencies.
The letter criticized the suspension of Special Immigrant Visa processing, the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan, and broader travel and asylum restrictions, warning that such policies endanger Afghan allies who supported U.S. forces during the war.
“Exploiting this tragedy to sow division and inflame fear will not make America safer. Abandoning those who made the courageous choice to stand beside us signals to those we may need as allies in the future that we cannot be trusted to honor our commitments. That is a mistake we cannot afford,” the group said.
The U.S. admitted nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and their families still wait at military bases and refugee camps around the world for a small number of SIVs.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.3 struck Afghanistan on Friday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The quake occurred at 10:09 local time at a depth of 35 km, USGS said.
Its epicentre was 25 kilometres from Nahrin district of Baghlan province in north Afghanistan.
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