COP29, the 29th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, will bring together states that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as thousands of experts, journalists, climate activists, and representatives from businesses and nongovernmental organizations. The conference will take place from November 11 to 22, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The conference is being held against the backdrop of Azerbaijan’s dire human rights record. It is important to include extensive civil society participation and open debate, free of fear of retaliation, to hold governments to their commitments to confront climate change and to ensure satisfactory outcomes from the conference. However, the Azerbaijani government’s hostility toward independent civic activism raises concerns about whether members of independent civil society, activists, human rights defenders, and journalists will be able to participate meaningfully at COP29. The following are questions and answers addressing the human rights implications of COP29 and the human rights concerns associated with the conference being held in a country with a history of repression that relies heavily on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.
- Why is the climate crisis also a human rights crisis?
- What is at stake for human rights at COP29?
- How are Azerbaijan’s plans to expand fossil fuel production incompatible with Paris Agreement goals?
- Why is a human rights lens essential to determining how to finance efforts to address climate change at COP29?
- What are the human rights concerns about Azerbaijan hosting COP29?
- What is the impact of the human rights crisis in Azerbaijan on environmental groups?
- Why is meaningful participation of civil society and Indigenous peoples essential to a successful COP29 outcome?
- Have previous climate summits restricted participation of civil society?
- What should the Azerbaijani government do to enable full and meaningful participation in COP29?
- What should states that are party to the UN Framework do to press Azerbaijan on ending human rights violations?
- What is the responsibility of the UN Framework Secretariat to uphold human rights at COP29 and beyond?
The right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right recognized globally. The climate crisis also affects many other human rights, including the rights to life, housing, food, and water.
Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, trap heat with profound consequences. People in many countries are already experiencing this harm, and the speed and scale will increase exponentially and erratically for the foreseeable future.
About 3.5 billion people already live in places and situations that are highly vulnerable to climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned. By 2050, more than a billion people living on small islands and in low-lying coastal communities are projected to be at risk from sea level rise and extreme weather.
Climate change also aggravates existing social and economic inequalities. People with intersecting marginalized identities and in vulnerable situations have an even greater risk of dying, of experiencing increased poverty, or of losing important resources because of climate change. Those most affected include people with low incomes; Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; older people; people with disabilities; LGBT people; pregnant women and other pregnant people; children; and migrant workers.
The production and use of fossil fuels has caused widespread air pollution, which both harms human health and drives an increase in global temperatures. Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of the climate crisis, accounting for over 80 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
At COP28 in 2023, the key outcome document (called the Global Stocktake) called on countries to start “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but fell short of committing governments to phase out fossil fuels within a clear timeline.
While this was the first time in more than 30 years of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that countries made a key decision to explicitly mention “fossil fuels,” the commitment fell short of what is needed to contain the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. There has been very little progress on this commitment since COP28.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cha
nge, existing fossil fuel projects are already more than the climate can withstand to limit global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, governments continue to authorize – and subsidize – building fossil fuel infrastructure and to poorly regulate existing operations.
The Azerbaijani COP29 Presidency shared its vision for the conference to stay in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Although the presidency has stressed the need for all countries to “strive for the highest possible ambition, in line with the Paris Agreement, and informed by the Global Stocktake,” it has not explicitly called on countries to transition away from fossil fuels.
Türkiye: Plans for Harmful Coal Expansion
Toxic Air Affects Health in Surrounding Community
To fulfill their human rights obligation to address climate change, governments at this year’s COP should ensure a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. They can do so by putting into action the commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” in an equitable, time-bound, and rights-respecting manner in their national climate plans.
While urgent government action to reduce emissions may still prevent the worst outcomes of climate change, even at the current levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, temperatures will continue to rise and climate impacts will intensify and become more frequent. The effects of extreme events, such as tropical storms, and other slower onset changes, such as sea-level rise, are already making some parts of the world uninhabitable.
The planned relocation of entire communities away from uninhabitable areas is already underway and projected to increase. But there are few if any protections for communities planning to relocate in the context of climate change, which should be considered a “measure of last resort” after all adaptation efforts are exhausted.
Rights-respecting approaches to planned relocation are essential to ensure support for communities to make these changes on their own terms and to provide them with access to the same or improved sources of livelihood, housing, education, and health care that they previously had.
People with disabilities are also facing disproportionate impacts of extreme weather events, including severe risks to their health and even death. At the same time, most governments are falling short of their human rights obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of people with disabilities in their responses to the climate crisis, including by failing to consider and include the rights of people with disabilities in climate adaptation plans. At previous COP conferences, activists with disabilities underlined the lack of accessibility, including insufficient accessible information of the draft texts of the negotiations.
Women’s rights, including equitable access to quality sexual and reproductive rights, are under attack in many parts of the world. Pregnancy is a stage of life in which pregnant people are especially vulnerable to environmental harm. Exposure to extreme heat and wildfires, for example, is associated with worse maternal and newborn health outcomes. Communities where access to maternal and newborn health care is already inadequate are the most at risk of harm from climate change, which would deepen the injustice of inadequate health care even further.
- How are Azerbaijan’s plans to expand fossil fuel production incompatible with Paris Agreement’s goals?
There is growing global consensus, including from the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that for countries to meet global climate targets there cannot be new oil, gas, or coal projects.
While Azerbaijan has recently invested in renewable energy, its oil and gas industry provides half of the government’s revenue. During a high-level meeting in April 2024 to prepare for COP29, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said that the country’s oil and gas reserves were “a gift from God,” suggesting that Azerbaijan is entitled to expand oil and gas production when all countries are being called upon to phase out production and use of fossil fuels. He also announced plans to expand gas production, mainly in response to European Union market demands. The EU is a major importer of Azerbaijani gas and it signed a deal in 2022 to double gas imports from Azerbaijan by 2027. During the same meeting, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan will “defend the right” of other fossil fuel-rich nations to “continue investments and production because the world needs it.”
Governments attending COP29 should resist the Azerbaijani government’s attempts to use its position as host to continue to push for the expansion of fossil fuels and undermine efforts to confront the climate crisis and protect human rights.
- Why is a human rights lens essential to determining how to finance efforts to address climate change at COP29?
Governments at COP29 are expected to set a new global climate finance goal to support the needs of developing countries in their mitigation and adaptation efforts. The cost is staggering and, as the World Bank has noted, climate-financing needs are larger as a percentage of GDP in countries that have contributed least to global warming.
International human rights law offers a critical framework through which to achieve these financing goals. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights commits governments to international cooperation and assistance to ensure that all countries are able to meet their human rights obligations, which includes the right to a healthy environment, as well as many other rights affected by climate change, including health, housing, water, and sanitation.
Human rights also apply to the procedural aspects of financing, requiring a process that is transparent, accountable, and participatory. Financing measures relating to climate change should also include safeguards to ensure that human rights principles, such as informed consent by and consultation with all groups involved, are upheld.
Just as important, a human rights framework underscores the need for a just transition to environmentally sustainable economies. As states negotiate new finance goals, they should commit to ending all forms of support, including subsidies and international finance, for oil, gas, and coal developments to rapidly reduce emissions and to limit the impacts of climate change. At the same time, they should introduce adequate measures to ensure that any associated price increases do not undermine people’s economic, social, and cultural rights.
Azerbaijan’s crackdown on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly raises grave concerns about whether independent members of civil society, activists, human rights defenders, and journalists at COP29 will be able to participate meaningfully during the conference.
Azerbaijani authorities have a longstanding record of suppressing free speech, swiftly and often brutally dispersing peaceful protests, and using pernicious and abusive laws to paralyze independent nongovernmental organizations. For many years, the authorities have retaliated against government critics, especially those who expose corruption and human rights violations, by jailing them. Critics who work on politically sensitive issues face heightened risk.
A crackdown on independent voices over the past year has resulted in the arrest or sentencing of at least 31 independent journalists, civil society activists, and academics on a variety of bogus criminal charges. Almost all remain in pretrial custody.
There are a handful of environmental activists in the country who have secured some important achievements, but they must tread carefully. The authorities’ decades-long pattern of retaliating against independent activists who expose issues the authorities consider “sensitive” raises grave concerns that certain kinds of environmental activism could be severely restricted during COP29.
Grassroots activists concerned about environmental issues experienced government repression firsthand in June 2023. Villagers in Soyudlu, a town in western Azerbaijan, protested against toxic waste from a gold mine and a planned waste lake. Riot police violently broke up the peaceful protest, injuring dozens of people. Police restricted access to the village for weeks, expelled journalists, and confiscated their phones. The authorities sentenced eight villagers on administrative charges for involvement in the protests.
In April, Azerbaijani authorities arrested Anar Mammadli, a veteran human rights defender, on bogus “smuggling” charges just two months after he set up the Climate of Justice initiative with an aim to advocate for civic freedoms and environmental justice in Azerbaijan ahead of COP29.
In June 2023, in another example of bogus prosecution, the authorities arrested renowned scholar, economist, and activist Gubad Ibadoghlu, who worked on exposing corruption in the fossil fuel industry in Azerbaijan and called for revenue transparency. Ibadoghlu, 53, has lived mostly in exile since 2015, after the authorities forcibly closed the economic research group he founded and worked at. In 2023, several weeks after he had returned to the country to visit his ailing mother, the police arrested him. They pressed bogus counterfeiting and extremism charges against him and held him in pretrial custody for nine months, during which time his health sharply deteriorated and the authorities failed to provide adequate medical care. He was released to house arrest in April and currently awaits trial. He faces up to 17 years in prison.
Under these circumstances, it is difficult to see how Azerbaijani environmental groups or journalists can openly critique and call for change in domestic climate policies. The potential chilling effect of the government’s response to the few instances of climate activism cannot be underestimated. Whoever dares to speak out against the fossil fuel industry under these conditions when the Azerbaijani oil and gas industry provides half of the government’s revenue is taking enormous risks.
- Why is meaningful participation of civil society and Indigenous peoples essential to a successful COP29 outcome?
Rights-respecting climate action needs the full and meaningful participation of activists, journalists, human rights defenders, civil society and youth groups, and Indigenous peoples’ representatives to ensure scrutiny of governmental action and to press for ambitious and successful COP29 outcomes. This includes those on the front lines of the climate crisis and the populations most at risk from the impacts of climate change.
EU: Address Indigenous Rights Violations in Malaysian Imports
Designate Sarawak as ‘High Risk’ Under New Anti-Deforestation Law
Freedom of expression, access to information, and freedom of association and peaceful assembly need to be protected. These rights are crucial for designing inclusive and ambitious policies that are urgently needed to address the climate crisis.
To meet their human rights commitments, the hosts of the UN Framework Convention’s conferences, including Azerbaijan as well as the framework’s secretariat, should respect the human rights of all participants, including their rights to free speech and to peacefully assemble inside and outside the official conference venue.
But representatives of civil society and Indigenous peoples have long fought for their right to participate in climate negotiations. At COP25 in Katowice, the Polish government prevented some climate activists from entering the country and searched some of them in their hotel rooms. At COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, observers who sought to attend events in person were told to “join online,” only to then find the events were offline. During COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian government imposed arbitrary registration restrictions on rights groups and activists, ramped up surveillance and detention, harassed climate activists, and denied entry to – and subsequently deported – at least one activist.
COP28 was marred by unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech from the UN Framework Secretariat within the UN-run “blue zone.”
The Azerbaijani government has stated its commitment to an inclusive COP29 process, adding that “the COP29 Presidency ... is working to ensure everyone’s voices are heard and perspectives are considered and included so that we deliver inclusive outcomes based on shared solutions.”
Azerbaijani authorities should put this commitment into action by fostering an environment that enables inclusive discussions about the phase-out of fossil fuels and other key aspects of tackling climate change. It should allow civil society groups to press for and scrutinize climate action before, during, and after the conference.
The government should reverse its record of retaliating against critics, starting with immediately and unconditionally releasing the journalists and activists who have been detained and imprisoned on politically motivated charges. The Azerbaijani authorities should immediately release and drop all charges against Anar Mammadli, the veteran human rights defender who created the Climate of Justice initiative ahead of COP29. They should also drop the charges against Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu and allow him to leave the country to seek medical treatment.
Azerbaijan should announce that it will allow climate activists to assemble peacefully during COP29. The government should support rather than restrict independent groups, including by revising restrictive legislation governing nongovernmental organizations and the media.
- What should states that are party to the UN Framework do to press Azerbaijan on ending human rights violations?
The member countries should emphasize the importance of a thriving and independent civil society to press for ambitious climate action. They should press the Azerbaijani government, publicly and privately, to respect its human rights obligations and to immediately and unconditionally release arbitrarily detained activists and human rights defenders.
- What is the responsibility of the UN Framework Secretariat to uphold human rights at COP29 and beyond?
The secretariat signed a host agreement for the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change with the government of Azerbaijan on August 26, 2024, but has not made that agreement public.
It should make the host agreement public and ensure that it “reflects the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter as well as respective obligations under international human rights law,” as mandated by parties to the framework in a decision from June 2023.
The parties also encouraged the secretariat to continue upholding “human rights law and guarantee the integrity, dignity and safety of all observers at UN Framework conferences.” The secretariat should call upon the Azerbaijani government to respect its human rights obligations to facilitate a rights-respecting climate conference and take prompt action should the government fail to do so.
