TOday marks the second and final week of COP29—the UN’s annual climate change conference, which seeks solutions to the global crisis. The presenter? The oil-rich country, according to the CIA World Factbook, is home to the Absheron peninsula in the Caspian Sea which local scientists say is “the most environmentally devastated place on earth.”
Being a petro-state is not a crime. But how Azerbaijan’s oil wealth worsens the human condition at home and abroad makes its hosting of COP29 an Orwellian disaster. Although 95% of Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gas, according to the environmental justice NGO, Crude Accountability, most people do not benefit from this wealth. Crude Accountability’s 2020 report “The Empty Bucket of Azerbaijan’s Oil State Fund” documents how living standards are declining and, according to the World Bank, a quarter of the population is stuck in poverty.
The country’s dictatorial President Ilham Aliyev personally oversees the country’s biggest cash cow: the State Oil Fund. That is why he considers the abundance of minerals in Azerbaijan “a gift from God” as it fails to lift up its people.
How has Azerbaijan fared at COP29? The key to its success may be that it has endeared itself to some of the world’s elite in ways that have put Azerbaijan at the top in recent years. This long-term charm offensive, which works to deflect criticism of Aliyev’s government and rebrand Azerbaijan as a healthy place, includes flying celebrities and hosting international events such as Formula 1. This trend is not limited to Azerbaijan. Scholars affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy have coined the term “hard power” to describe the efforts of the wealthy to build influence around the world to strengthen their domestic empire. These days, few seem “sharper” than Azerbaijan.
The country’s poor environmental and human rights record stands out. Between the President and his late father Heydar, the Aliyevs ran Azerbaijan for more than fifty years. Critics are often arrested, imprisoned, exiled, and perhaps worse. Among the regime’s targets is Gubad Ibadoghlu, lead author of the 2020 Crude Accountability report, who was arrested in July 2023 while visiting family in Azerbaijan.
The country recently launched a pandemic-era war of attrition in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020, which eventually expelled the indigenous Armenians within four years – in violation of International Court of Justice orders. The violent takeover following the nine-month siege was sugarcoated as an environmental protest. Azerbaijan then proudly announced Karabakh as the first place in Azerbaijan to be “zero.” In March 2024, President Aliyev celebrated the predictable and preventable forced migration with the traditional spring equinox fire, calling it “the final cleansing.”
Given Azerbaijan’s use of the environment to justify what leading human rights groups see as ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, the regime’s COP29 is the last rubber stamp of authoritarianism and hostility, including continued threats to attack Armenia.
However, there is pushback from around the world, including international organizations such as Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, as well as climate justice activists such as Greta Thunberg – who rejects Azerbaijan as “an oppressive, authoritarian, ethnic cleansing country” and using COP29 to “wash away their crimes”—and the activists in Azerbaijan. Local activists in particular are speaking out bravely despite the great dangers at home and abroad.
Resistance to tyranny is scary. Just ask my friend Bahruz Samadov—a brave and brilliant young academic—who shouted, “Give me a voice at COP29!” during a recent prison transfer. He is among hundreds of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, in addition to a dozen Armenian prisoners of war, including top leaders of Karabakh, who have been imprisoned for decades. Samadov is charged with “treason” for criticizing Azerbaijan’s policy on Nagorno-Karabakh and his ties to Armenian activists.
Many people have argued that a petro-aggressor should never host COP29—but what has been done has been done. The issue now is whether the heads of state and representatives from more than 180 countries at the UN climate conference will have the courage to speak up for the rights of Azerbaijani political prisoners and Armenian hostages, including asking to meet them, and push for the safe return of ethnically cleansed Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Doing the right thing in Azerbaijan is by no means a regional issue. As Azerbaijan’s 2020 war on Nagorno-Karabakh without global consequences arguably inspired other dictators like Vladimir Putin to follow suit, whatever happens in Baku this week may not stay in Baku. The petro-aggressor in charge of COP29 is not hot at all.
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