By Ben Linden, Advocacy Director, Europe and Central Asia, Amnesty International USA
The 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, failed in predictable ways long before its ultimate failure to reach climate finance goals that would protect human rights. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified procedural justice – that is, the importance of ensuring that the communities most impacted by the climate crisis are able to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect them – as a key principle of climate justice.
Before Saudi Arabia played spoiler, and even before the re-election of Donald Trump, who is expected to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, it was clear that the Azerbaijan government would fail to uphold procedural justice at COP29 because it refused to protect civic space.
Without adequate protections for civil society organizations and human rights defenders at COP29, key voices were left out of the process. Procedural and climate justice never stood a chance.
Who came to COP29?
With COP29 dubbed the all-important “finance COP,” international activists and members of civil society themselves were only able to attend COP if they could, first, obtain a sought-after conference badge, and second, secure the funding necessary to cover exorbitant lodging rates. Those able to attend sought to confront parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with climate justice demands covering finance, the phaseout of fossil fuels, and the development of new, human rights-compliant Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists also attended, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined (1,033). UNFCCC parties sent delegations of various sizes, including about 80 heads of state.
As host country, Azerbaijan both oversaw official proceedings and mobilized conference staff, including security personnel and an army of volunteers who directed foot traffic. In the Azerbaijani government-administered Green Zone (a separate area from the UN-administered Blue Zone where negotiations took place), a pavilion dedicated to Azerbaijani government-supported non-governmental organizations (NGOs) promoted Azerbaijan’s official narrative of support for green projects.
Who was missing?
Rarely acknowledged openly by UNFCCC parties was the absence of the very members of Azerbaijan’s independent civil society who are most needed to hold the host country’s government itself to account. These individuals include human rights defenders, journalists, and other members of Azerbaijan’s civil society who have exposed environmental injustice and corruption. Many are forced to work from abroad; others have been detained or otherwise persecuted.
- Gubad Ibadoghlu was arrested on trumped-up charges in an apparent retaliation for his anticorruption work and criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities, and is currently under house arrest and denied medical care he urgently needs.
- Anar Mammadli, co-founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative, a newly established group looking into the promotion of civic space and environmental justice within COP29, has been in detention since April of 2024 and has also been denied needed medical care.
- Nargiz Absalamova, a journalist who covered environmental protests, was arrested in December of 2023 on charges of money smuggling and remains in detention at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Azerbaijan has only continued its crackdown on activists and government critics in the weeks after COP29. Rufat Safarov, a prominent human rights defender, was detained on December 3 and charged with fraud and hooliganism. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. He was previously imprisoned for nine years in 2015 on apparent trumped-up charges after he made a public statement criticizing the government, then pardoned in 2019. On December 6, police detained journalists working for the independent outlet Meydan TV on what appear to be politically motivated charges.
All told, Azerbaijani human rights defenders estimate that approximately 300 people remain in detention on politically motivated charges. These are the very individuals who could help correct Azerbaijan’s regressive approach to climate policy and root out corruption.
Instead, Azerbaijan is the Eastern European country most impacted by the climate crisis and faces a 12.6 percent reduction in future GDP in 2070 under its current NDC commitments. The Azerbaijan government plans to increase fossil gas extraction by more than 30 percent over the next decade, contributing to a global discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and the lower global production levels necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, consistent with the Paris Agreement.
Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev made no effort at COP29 to gloss over his government’s plans, instead using his moment on the world stage to assert that fossil fuels are a “gift from God.” This lies in stark contrast to the official narrative promoted in the Green Zone’s government-supported NGO pavilion.
Why it matters who was missing
Both the process and outcomes of COP29 were tainted by exclusion. First, there was the financial difficulty faced by many civil society members who lacked the resources to travel to and stay in Baku. Some participants paid lodging rates in Baku up to seven or eight times the normal rate, which was simply out of reach for most civil society activists.
Much starker was the silencing of Azerbaijan’s own independent civil society. Some of those who would have contributed the most to COP29 were imprisoned mere kilometers from the conference, their families facing threats of reprisal.
Any time the COP host country’s government prevents local independent civil society from participating in COP, as Egypt and the UAE did as well in their turns as host, it cements a harmful precedent that threatens human rights everywhere. But ultimately, it also harms the ability of the international community to reach climate policy outcomes that are conducive to maintaining a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature.
Put simply, there is no climate justice without human rights.
Recommendations for the Biden Administration
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Podesta spent much of his press conference at COP29 explaining how the Biden Administration would cement its climate legacy in advance of the incoming Trump administration. In doing so, Podesta was understandably attempting to answer one of the questions on everyone’s mind.
But the Biden Administration must also use its remaining weeks to undertake both private and public measures in support of human rights in Azerbaijan.
Before COP29, Amnesty International called on all states attending COP29 to urge the Azerbaijan government to release all prisoners of conscience and others arbitrarily imprisoned in retaliation for their human rights work or dissenting views; to publicly denounce all instances of reprisals and acts of intimidation against participants before, during or after UNFCCC meetings; and to increase political and diplomatic efforts to protect environmental and human rights defenders as well as climate activists.
Recent statements from the Biden Administration have hit the right notes. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called out the Azerbaijan government for its latest crackdown on civil society and media while also highlighting those who have been unjustly detained since well before COP29. At the State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Defender Award Ceremony, an empty chair was left for Safarov, who Blinken said was detained just hours after visiting the U.S. Embassy in Baku in preparation for his planned travel to the United States to accept his award.
Such statements and gestures can make a real difference by putting pressure on the Azerbaijani government. Still, the Biden Administration must back up these words with actions, at multiple levels, through continued public pronouncements, prison visits, observation of court proceedings, and all other diplomatic means available to them. The immediate goal should be to put the Azerbaijan government on notice that COP29’s conclusion does not mean the world’s attention has shifted entirely away from human rights in that country. Doing so would send a powerful message to future COP host countries.
While it would not turn back the clock on the disappointing COP29 outcomes, the actions that the Biden administration takes now can illuminate how attacks on civic space and human rights are attacks on climate justice. Such a contribution would endure.