Afghan Taliban officials will attend a major United Nations climate change conference starting next week, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, the first time they have attended since the former insurgents seized power in 2021.

The COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, will be among the most important multilateral events attended by Taliban administration officials since they seized control of Kabul after 20 years of fighting with NATO-backed forces.

The UN has not allowed the Taliban to take Afghanistan’s seat in the General Assembly, and Afghanistan’s government is not officially recognized by UN member states, largely because of Taliban restrictions on women’s education and freedom of movement.

The spokesman of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said that officials from the National Environmental Protection Agency have arrived in Azerbaijan to participate in the COP conference. The Taliban took over the agency when they returned to power as US-led forces withdrew.

Taliban officials have attended UN meetings on Afghanistan in Doha, and Taliban ministers have attended forums in China and Central Asia over the past two years.

But the COP Office of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has postponed consideration of Afghanistan’s participation until 2021, effectively freezing the country out of the talks.

Afghan NGOs have also struggled to participate in climate negotiations in recent years.

Host Azerbaijan has invited Afghan environment agency officials to COP29 as observers, allowing them to “potentially participate in talks on the periphery and possibly hold bilateral meetings,” a diplomatic source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Because the Taliban is not officially recognized in the UN system as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the source said, officials cannot receive credentials to participate in full member state proceedings.

Azerbaijan’s presidency declined to comment.

The Taliban have closed schools and universities to students over the age of 12. They also announced a set of sweeping morality laws this year requiring women to cover their faces in public and restricting them from traveling outside the home without a male guardian. .

The Taliban say they respect women’s rights according to their interpretation of Islamic law.

Afghanistan is considered one of the countries most affected by climate change. Flash floods have killed hundreds this year and the heavily agriculture-dependent country has suffered one of its worst droughts in decades. Many subsistence farmers, who make up a large part of the population, face deepening food insecurity.

Some supporters have criticized the Taliban’s international isolation, saying it only harms the Afghan people.

“Afghanistan is one of the countries that is really left behind in the needs it has,” said Habib Mayar, deputy secretary-general of the G7+, an intergovernmental organization of conflict-affected countries.

“It’s double the price I’m paying,” Mayar said. “There is a lack of attention, a lack of connection with the international community and then there are increasing humanitarian needs.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)