The world needs to hold Azerbaijan accountable at COP29

For a president who entered the White House claiming that climate change and human rights would be at the crux of his foreign policy, Joe Biden has fallen short on that promise. Nowhere has that been more evident than in his policies toward the petrostate of Azerbaijan, a country that despite its dreadful human rights and environmental records is scheduled to host the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, beginning Nov. 11.

Azerbaijan has deftly used geopolitics and its natural resources to essentially grab a seat at the world’s table while using the pretext of historical revisionism to greenwash its global image, particularly in the wake of its mistreatment of ethnic Armenians. It was under the false pretense of environmentalism that Azerbaijan implemented in December 2022 an illegal road blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only road linking more than 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to the outside world, that led to the ethnic cleansing of its Indigenous people, making it the largest displacement of Armenians since the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

Given that troubling track record, the international community must use COP29 to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its war crimes committed against the Armenian people as well as its recent crackdown on government critics and activists. But based on President Biden’s recent letter to President Ilham Aliyev, in which he said that he looked “forward to advancing our shared climate goals at COP29 in Baku in November and stand ready to support Azerbaijan in making the event a success,” it appears that Biden is putting politics ahead of human rights and the environment.

Armenian Americans know all too well that side of Biden. Throughout his administration, he has turned a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s malfeasance and violent behavior as a geopolitical trade-off for its oil and proximity to Iran. In 2021 and each year thereafter, he waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act that bans military assistance to Azerbaijan despite Baku launching an illegal war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

That war was part of Azerbaijan’s attempt to recapture the territory from Armenia, which gained control of the area in the early 1990s, a change that resulted in a frozen conflict for nearly three decades. A war in which Azerbaijan used chemical weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, to burn down forests causing irreparable damage to the environment and where Azerbaijani troops wontly executed captured Armenian soldiers, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. And the White House continues to remain silent on Armenian political prisoners being held illegally by Azerbaijan, including Armenian humanitarian Ruben Vardanyan and other former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Biden has failed to hold Azerbaijan accountable or implement any punitive measures, including sanctions. It is hard to take the president at face value when he talks about upholding the values of democracy and the scourge of authoritarianism and then gives Azerbaijan a free pass for hosting COP29. His silence and complicity in Azerbaijan’s crimes sends the wrong and conflicting message to autocrats around the world.

Fortunately, there are people like Luis Moreno Ocampo, a human rights activist and the first Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court who has used his voice to call out Azerbaijan’s subterfuge in using such forums to whitewash its image.

And 60 members of Congress, led by Representative Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, and Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, recently signed a bipartisan letter calling for US leadership in holding Azerbaijan accountable for committing war crimes, taking hostages, and illegally occupying Armenian territory.

While these actions are all positive signs, the fact still remains that Azerbaijan, a country that relies heavily on oil and gas, which account for nearly 95 percent of its total export revenues, has been given the keys to be an arbiter of fixing climate change and protecting the environment. When world leaders gather in Baku, they will also be visiting a country that is home to one of the most polluted places in the world, the Caspian Sea and the Absheron Peninsula, which has been devastated by oil spills. They will also be visiting a country that Human Rights Watch and Freedom House say is escalating crackdowns on political opponents and human rights advocates, including Anar Mammadli for his work on climate justice.

In many ways, the fights for human rights and against climate change are not mutually exclusive. It is one of the reasons why the COP29 summit has been mired in controversy. Despite Azerbaijan’s claim that the conference will be the “Peace COP,” it will take place against a backdrop of Azerbaijan’s dubious human rights record and deepening reliance on fossil fuels. That is why it is incumbent on world leaders, including Biden, to set the record straight and use COP29 to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its actions.

Stephan Pechdimaldji is a communications strategist living in the San Francisco Bay Area.