Madrid, December 12 (EFE). – Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has promised Afghan women that this government will “never” recognize the Taliban regime and has defended gender equality as something “indispensable” to building a solid democracy at a time when the PSOE is facing complaints of sexual harassment.
A few words she spoke at the opening of the HearUs 2025 conference entitled “Promoting Accountability for Women in Afghanistan”, organized in collaboration with the Women For Afghanistan organization at the ministry headquarters.
Albares, in her speech to dozens of Afghan women, said what is happening in her country since the Taliban came to power in 2021 is the “most devastating” example of inequality, but warned that these setbacks on equality also occur in other places and that even in Spain there are reactionary ideas that “call into question” their rights.
In this sense, he assured that they want to perpetuate “abuses and arbitrariness” and attack “the fundamental idea of equality that underlies our democracies”.
Afghanistan, the minister added, has become a “veritable desert of rights”, with a population forced to flee, where criticism is persecuted, the economy is impoverished and where women are excluded “from all public life and all social life”.
Above all, Albares emphasized that the Taliban’s aim is to deprive women and girls of “any future prospects” and that is why it is so important that they are seen and heard, because in his opinion “none of this is written in the history of Afghanistan”.
“No one will stop you,” declared Albares, assuring that Afghan women “carry within them a torch of resistance that nothing can extinguish,” because it passes from hand to hand, crossing borders, creeds and differences, and that their struggle challenges everyone.
The minister also recalled the feminist commitment of the executive and his department, just as several socialist leaders were denounced for sexual harassment, and reiterated that this week the first Spanish feminist cooperation strategy was published and that the Foreign Action Strategy 2025-2028 places gender equality at the heart of the ministry’s international work. EFE
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