Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP29 next month means the climate conference is being held for the third year running in an authoritarian state with a dubious human rights record, and for the second year in a petrostate, the Financial Times writes. To ensure developing countries, and indeed fossil fuel producers, are part of a global solution to climate change, it is important they can take charge of COPs.
In a lightning strike, Azerbaijani troops seized Artsakh. Russian peacekeepers largely looked away. The province’s entire Armenian population of more than 100,000 was driven out. At least 23 Armenian political prisoners are still being held in Azerbaijan.
Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, has made several concessions in the hope of securing a deal to normalize relations with Baku, notably recognising Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity—including Artsakh. Indeed, Azerbaijan was only awarded COP29 after Armenia lifted a veto in return for the release of 32 Armenian prisoners of war. But Yerevan has accused Baku of repeatedly delaying signing a largely agreed peace deal.
Worryingly, after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Baku in August, Moscow signaled support for Baku’s ambitions to create a land corridor linking Azerbaijan to Nakhijevan. This would run across southern Armenia and in effect block its border with Iran, a key supply route. Many in Yerevan fear Aliyev has not dropped military ambitions toward Armenia itself, which he calls “Western Azerbaijan”.
Rights groups last week called for pressure on Baku to reverse a “vicious” further clampdown on critics, media and civil society under way ahead of the COP.
Azerbaijan, which has pledged a “COP of peace”, should live up to that spirit by signing a peace deal with Armenia before it begins. International governments and attendees should use the opportunity to press the host country on its democratic record. They and the UN’s climate arm must ensure rights are respected during the conference. And reforms are badly needed to tighten the process of awarding COPs—and the obligations of the hosts.
