People in Need Statement on the Upcoming COP29

We recognise that the COP platform is a vital international tool for negotiating key climate commitments and that is why PIN representatives are regular participants at annual COP conferences. This year, however, we shall abstain from participating at the COP29 summit to be held from 11-22 November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is a country whose regime significantly undermines the human rights of its citizens.

Azerbaijan’s government has a longstanding and well-documented pattern of repressing independent civil society and silencing critical voices, including climate defenders. Journalists, bloggers, members of opposition parties and movements, religious, anti-war, and LGBTQ+ activists are regularly persecuted under bogus charges. Azerbaijani human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people are currently behind bars, including at least 18 journalists and other individuals affiliated with Abzas Media, Toplum TV and Kanal 13, the last independent outlets in the country. We have also become the target of a smear campaign launched by Azerbaijani pro-governmental media that was aimed at local activists as well as international actors.

We have joined the Demand Rights at COP Initiative, a coalition of numerous nongovernmental organisations urging Azerbaijan to uphold its international obligations regarding human rights and climate justice.

This initiative calls on the Azerbaijani government to:

• immediately and unconditionally release all human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society activists wrongfully held on politically motivated grounds and drop the bogus charges against them;
• the use of criminal prosecution as a tool to suppress government critics and members of civil society;
• lift undue restrictions on civil society by amending laws related to the registration and funding of nongovernmental groups and media, bringing them into compliance with international standards and recommendations issued by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.

The COP platform is based on the cooperation of numerous parties, including those representing civil society. Azerbaijan, however, represses civil society actors, including environmental activists. Such is the case of Anar Mammadli, a prominent human rights defender and a founding member of the recently formed Climate of Justice Initiative. Mammadli was arrested on April 29, 2024, amid Azerbaijan’s escalating crackdown on independent voices and charged with spurious currency smuggling.

We express our solidarity with all activists who are being persecuted in the country.

We would also like to highlight from the Demand Rights at COP Initiative a call for the UNFCCC to set human rights criteria for future COP hosts, including an obligation to realise the rights to freedom of speech and assembly that are preconditions to ensure an ambitious COP outcome.

In light of the results of last year's COP28 conference in Dubai, when a road map for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” was approved by all 198 countries, it is absolutely crucial that all parties must now agree on the need to transition away from fossil fuels, including how to finance this energy transition & realise a fair, fast, and funded phase-out of all fossil fuel production and consumption.

At the same time, countries must agree on a new target for financing climate-change mitigation measures in developing countries, which will replace the so-far unfulfilled target of $100 billion per year.