TheCaliforniaCourier.com
By Harut Sassounian
October 21, 2024
As the UN Climate Summit (COP29) is set to be held in Baku starting on November 11, it is becoming increasingly clear that Azerbaijan should not have been allowed to host such a prestigious gathering. In addition to Armenian protests about ethnic cleansing and the illegal detention of Armenian prisoners in Baku, there have been worldwide objections about the Conference being held in Baku because of Azerbaijan’s flagrant and persistent violations of human rights.
On October 10, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published an article titled, “COP29 Host Country Agreement Lacks Rights Protections: Azerbaijan Should Guarantee Rights of Civil Society Participants at Climate Conference.” HRW expressed its serious concerns about Baku hosting the Conference.
HRW obtained a copy of the signed UN-Azerbaijan Agreement which has not been made public, despite the fact that UN members had insisted “that host country agreements should be made publicly available and should uphold international human rights law.”
HRW urged the UN to “publicly call upon the Azerbaijani government to respect its human rights obligations and facilitate a rights-respecting climate conference.” Amnesty International also issued a similar request in July. It is important that the Agreement protect not only the rights of Azerbaijani citizens, but also the safety and security of thousands of international participants of the Conference.
When I clicked on the link that HRW had included in its article, I found the text of the 20-page-long Agreement signed between the UN and the Government of Azerbaijan in August 2024. HRW complained that the Agreement “is replete with significant shortcomings and ambiguities on the protections for participants’ rights.” For example, while the Agreement states that Conference participants “shall enjoy immunity from legal process in respect of words spoken or written and any act performed by them,” it requires that they “respect Azerbaijani laws and not interfere in its ‘internal affairs.’”