Another major climate conference helps a despotic regime
Azerbaijan, the host of the next U.N. climate conference, has a sordid record of human rights violations.
By the Washington Post Editorial Editorial Board
When the nations that are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decide who will host the annual climate conference, the criteria include a country’s infrastructure, climate commitments, political stability and financial resources. But not democracy or human rights — or, apparently, whether blessing a particular regime with the privilege will embarrass the organization and the climate diplomats it assembles. The result is repeated instances of “greenwashing” some of the world’s most repressive rulers and most enthusiastic extractors of fossil fuels.
The upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP29, opens Nov. 11 in Azerbaijan. This is the third in a row in a dictatorship and the second in a row in a petrostate. The previous two conferences were held in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Azerbaijan seeks prestige by playing host in the capital, Baku, for a conference that is expected to focus on setting new finance goals for battling climate change. But that should not obscure the fact that Azerbaijan is ruled by a brutal despot, President Ilham Aliyev.
When 60 U.S. lawmakers sent a letter on Oct. 3 calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “press for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, hostages, and POWs, including ethnic Armenians,” the Azeri leader dismissed it as “disgusting.” But the concerns outlined by the lawmakers are very real. Azerbaijan’s sordid record of human rights violations is backed up by extensive evidence.
Last year, Azeri military forces seized the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, displacing the population of ethnic Armenians and dissolving its legal, political and civic institutions. At least 23 prominent Armenian political figures are still being held in prison by Azerbaijan, including Ruben Vardanyan, a Russian Armenian billionaire who held a government position in Karabakh before the Azeri attack. Family members say he went on a hunger strike to protest poor conditions with long periods of solitary confinement.
In a recent joint report, Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now chronicled a wave of repression against individuals inside Azerbaijan, including the arrest of dozens of individuals on politically motivated and bogus criminal charges in the months before the COP29 meeting. According to the letter to Mr. Blinken, the population of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has jumped from 122 in December 2021 to at least 303 as of this June.
We have called attention previously to the unjust imprisonment in July 2023 of the prominent economist Gubad Ibadoghlu, who was detained on fabricated charges of extremist activity and counterfeiting. The real reason was his revelations of how Mr. Aliyev has mismanaged Azerbaijan’s oil riches. On April 22, Mr. Ibadoghlu was transferred to house arrest, but his family says he remains under pervasive surveillance. A pretrial investigation has been suspended, but he is vulnerable to rearrest and cannot leave the country. He suffers from a serious heart ailment and needs treatment abroad.
Particularly galling, given Azerbaijan’s hosting of a big climate conference, is the case of Anar Mammadli, a veteran activist who leads the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center and is a founding member of the Climate Justice Initiative, which sought to organize civil society ahead of COP29. Police forced him into a car in Baku in April, and charged him with currency smuggling — the allegation is used frequently by the authorities against civil society activists — and have held him in pretrial detention. Mr. Mammadli previously served 2½ years in prison that the European Court for Human Rights found was designed to “silence and punish” him for his election monitoring work. Mr. Mammadli has repeatedly sought to register his nongovernment organizations, but the government has refused, denying him the basis to operate legally.
Mr. Aliyev refuses to tolerate serious political competition. The government has opened a criminal case on bogus charges of slander and insult against Ali Karimli, chairman of the opposition Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan. The trial has been repeatedly delayed, perhaps until after the climate conference. Mr. Aliyev has also sought to crush independent media. Three outlets still remaining in Azerbaijan have come under attack by the government; the authorities arrested 12 media professionals and six others; all 18 remain behind bars. The outlets included Abzas Media and Toplum TV, which is led by journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who was imprisoned for 1½ years on spurious charges of tax evasion and embezzlement after she exposed corruption in the Aliyev regime.
Yes, this is a climate conference, and global warming is a problem that affects all countries and demands common effort, regardless of politics. But these facts do not require lending prestige and legitimacy to unsavory regimes on an annual basis. A better approach might be picking a permanent host country with strong environmental credentials and democratic commitments — Costa Rica, say — and ending this cycle once and for all.
