Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 15
First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan
Published 24 May 2022
Paragraph 49
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Government policy on Afghanistan All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
It is important for the UK’s engagement with the Taliban to come alongside extensive and targeted outreach to Afghan civil society, particularly those active on the ground. It should consult these groups on its policies towards Afghanistan and support them where possible through funding and other forms of engagement. This is important to Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan 57 protect the country’s civil society ecosystem, preventing the destruction of the progress it has made in recent decades; to ensure that their views are taken into account in the design of UK policy; and to show the Taliban that the world is watching its actions. In its response to this report, the Government should set out the steps it is taking to engage with Afghan civil society. In the longer term, we recommend that the Foreign Office should continue to invest in expertise on Afghanistan—drawing on that held by former DFID personnel—in order to inform its policy and ensure that we are ready when there is a change to re-engage with the country on a more profound level. This should include meaningful engagement with members of the British Afghan diaspora. The FCDO should also establish an atrocity and human rights abuse monitoring mechanism for Afghanistan.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan (HC 169), paragraph 49, 24 May 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 29 July 2022 (deadline 24 July 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government accepts that parts of its crisis response need improvement and agrees on future engagement with Afghanistan, but does not agree that it failed to plan for an evacuation or for closing the Kabul Embassy.
- It states that it "does not agree that it failed to plan for a possible evacuation", or that the FCDO failed to plan for the possible closure of the British Embassy in Kabul.
- On people not directly employed by the UK, it "will consider these arguments carefully" in planning years 2 and 3 of Pathway 3 of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, but warns that very broad commitments would, "unless significantly qualified", go beyond the UK's practical ability to resettle people.
- The FCDO says it is "committed to seeing through the full implementation" of its Lessons Learned recommendations, with progress reviewed in November 2022 and an update to the Committee "early next year".
- On future engagement, it agrees that the UK should re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul "as soon as security and political conditions permit", and that aid should be sustained, committing the same amount again this financial year.