Azerbaijan Eyes Prestige Boost From Hosting COP29, Despite the Critics

As Azerbaijan prepares to host this month’s global climate summit, it is getting plenty of the attention it has sought. But as often happens when this oil-rich, authoritarian state is home to a high-profile international event, much of the publicity is bad.

Baku surely expected it would get criticism from the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) when it won its bid last year to host the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) on November 11-22. It has also been taking flak within business and finance circles, however.

Unflattering pieces in the Financial Times and The Economist have accused it of using the COP-adjacent cred to deflect from its own “critically insufficient” climate plans, “launder” the reputation of authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev, and generally “greenwash” the regime, distracting from a poor human rights record and other faults.

“I cannot but touch upon the smear campaign by some media outlets aimed at tarnishing Azerbaijan’s image under false pretext,” Aliyev groused publicly at a pre-COP meeting on October 10. “Such vain attempts cannot derail us from achieving our noble mission to cope with the negative impacts of climate change.”

It is a drill Azerbaijan has been through before. The country has long regarded holding large-scale events as a path toward international prestige. It hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012. It has bid repeatedly, albeit unsuccessfully, to host the Summer Olympics and has hosted two Olympics-like events: the European Games in 2015 and the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017. Since 2017, it has hosted the Formula One circuit’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix through downtown Baku.

Azerbaijan has gotten bad press for big events in the past. But the problem could be magnified with COP29 this month, given its planetary stakes and alleged obfuscation around its precursors in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

The Azerbaijani government is drawn to such hosting opportunities for “brand-making purposes,” said Najmin Kamilsoy, an analyst and doctoral candidate in public policy at Charles University in Prague.

At the same time, “the government is very sensitive to the negative attention of the international media ahead of the event,” he told RFE/RL. “They want as many Western stakeholders as possible to attend COP29, and they want their organization of the event to be regarded as successful.”

Azerbaijan has gotten bad press for big events in the past. But the problem could be magnified with COP29, given its planetary stakes.

“I don’t think the government was fully aware that COP was not Formula One or Eurovision, that it had global implications,” said Arzu Geybulla, an Azerbaijani journalist and co-author of a new report by the U.K.-based think tank Chatham House.