EU must abandon Afghanistan deportation plans and stop readmission talks with the Taliban

23 June 2026

Amnesty International urges the European Union (EU) institutions and member states to abandon Afghanistan deportation plans and end any readmission cooperation with Taliban de facto authorities.

Afghanistan cannot in any way be considered safe for returns, and this approach will put the lives of returnees at risk, as repeatedly noted by several UN bodies.

The European Commission recently invited Taliban authorities to Brussels to discuss the deportation of Afghan nationals. This meeting, which is expected to take place imminently according to media reports, follows a push by several member states to accelerate deportations to Afghanistan, despite the dire human rights situation and amid a deepening humanitarian crisis in the country, with severe food insecurity and almost 22 million people in need of assistance.

The EU is well aware of this, has repeatedly denounced the Taliban's horrific abuses, and played a key role in efforts towards accountability, including the establishment of an independent investigative mechanism on Afghanistan at the UN Human Rights Council last October.

This effort to deport Afghans flies in the face of the EU's own human rights benchmarks for engagement with the Taliban. It overlooks the very real and well-documented risks that anyone returned to the country would face and their reasons for fleeing in the first place, including the risk of persecution, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and reprisals under Taliban rule.

"The desperate scenes of people - including EU staff - fleeing Afghanistan are a recent memory. It is unconscionable that the EU would now try and deport people to Afghanistan, which has only become more dangerous in the meantime," said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office.

"Any EU engagement on deportations to Afghanistan is reckless, dangerous and ignores the EU's own legal obligations - notably the obligation not to return anyone to a situation where their life may be at risk."

"The Taliban's institutionalized system of repression affects every aspect of daily life, and includes severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls, the use of torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrests, and extrajudicial executions. Any EU engagement on deportations to Afghanistan is reckless, dangerous and ignores the EU's own legal obligations - notably the obligation not to return anyone to a situation where their life may be at risk."

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