COP29, Azerbaijan, and Environmental and Human Rights

Online Event

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 from 10:00-11:00 am EDT

In November 2024, the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, marking the third year in a row that the meeting has convened in a country with significant fossil fuel reserves and a dismal human rights record. As Azerbaijan prepares for COP29, the authorities have arrested and detained dozens of independent journalists and the country’s leading anticorruption expert focused on the oil and gas sector. Surveillance inside the country and abroad threatens civil society and media, and snap elections in February, which were held ahead of the scheduled elections that should have been set to take place in October 2025, have ensured President Ilham Aliyev’s presidency for another seven years.

Please join us for a panel discussion co-organized with Crude Accountability on Azerbaijan’s human rights record, and the current environmental and human rights risks associated with the holding of COP29 in Baku.

SPEAKERS

Angelina Davydova is an environmental and climate journalist. Originally from Russia, she is now based in Berlin, Germany. She also edits the magazine Environment and Law, and hosts the podcasts “The Eurasian Climate Brief” and “Posle Zavtra” (The day after tomorrow). She is currently a Fellow of the Institute for Global Reconstitution (Berlin) and an environmental and climate project coordinator with the Dialogue for Understanding e. V (Berlin). She is one of the editors and experts of the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group. She is one of the councilors of the World Future Council, and she has been an observer of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2008. She is also a coordinator of the network of climate communicators from Kazakhstan organized by Eurasianet.org

Arzu Geybulla is an Azerbaijani columnist and writer with a special focus on digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedoms. She has written for Al Jazeera, Eurasianet, CODA, Open Democracy, and Radio Free Europe, with a byline on CNN International. She is also a regional editor for the South Caucasus and Turkey at Global Voices. In the past, she had been involved in numerous cross-border confidence-building projects within the scope of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation and other projects focusing on peaceful coexistence between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Kate Watters is cofounder and executive director of Crude Accountability, an environmental and human rights nonprofit that works with oil and gas-impacted communities in the Caspian Sea Basin, including in Azerbaijan. She has worked on and extensively written about environmental, human rights, and climate issues in Azerbaijan.

MODERATOR

Sebastien Peyrouse is Director of the Central Asia Program and Research Professor, IERES, The George Washington University. His main areas of expertise are political systems in Central Asia, economic and social issues, Islam and religious minorities, and Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward China, India, and South Asia.