In only a few weeks, on 11 November 2024, member states of the UN will meet in Azerbaijan for COP29 (“29th Conference of the Parties”). Armenian human rights and environmental activists are calling for protests, since Azerbaijan continues to violate human rights, not only since the occupation of Artsakh in 2023. Activists from Rojava support the campaign in favor of a democratic and multi-ethnic Middle East, in support of the people of Armenia and against the ecocidal politics of Turkey-affiliated Azerbaijan.
Vêjîn Silêman: “Jin Jiyan Azadî is unimaginable without ecological justice”
Azerbaijan is a fossil fuel state. Fossil fuels made up 92% of its exports in 2022 and the state has no intention to change this. In fact Azerbaijan plans to increase its oil and gas production by, at least, 1/3 by 2034. The state must secure billion dollar contracts with buyers to ensure it can pay for it’s own activities, including its repression of its own society and the ongoing war, occupation, and genocide Azerbaijan is waging in the ancestral Armenian territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. This shows that Azerbaijan is using COP29 to greenwash it’s own violence and destruction.
While Azerbaijan uses COP29 to it’s advantage, all 194 participating UN nation-states are complicit in their silence and active participation in this charade. They accept the state as the conference’s host, have contracts for buying it’s fossil fuels, and some provide Azerbaijan with arms. Azerbaijan provides Israel with 70% of it’s oil, via the Turkish port of Ceyhan, in exchange for weapons. 40% of all of Azerbaijan’s weapons are from Israel. Israel uses this oil to fuel it’s genocide on the Palestinian people, Azerbaijan turns these weapons on Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples, and Turkey enables the process. In this dirty cycle, Azerbaijan sells it’s extracted resources to buy weapons for it’s terror, and other nation-states buy these resources to support their own regimes of terror.
During the occupation of Nagoro-Karabakh thousand have been displaced from their ancestors land, destruction of Armenian cultural heritage is continuing until this day and there are still Armenian war prisoners in Azerbaijani prisons. Considering the ecocide being committed in the areas of North-East Syria that are under occupation of Turkey and it’s proxies, it is more then likely, that the Azerbaijani occupation might have similar effects in Nagoro-Karabakh.
Barîn Hemo: “We feel the pain of the Armenian people, but we believe we can achieve a better world togther”
The absurdity of a genocidal, petro-state hosting the world’s biggest meeting on climate changes shows how the nation-states uses COP29 to pacify demands for change. To make people think state-leaders are taking responsibility for protecting life on our planet, while continuing to destroy it. This is nothing new, last year the conference was held in Qatar.
The campaign calls for a boycott on COP29 and demands the release of all Armenian prisoners and Azerbaijani political prisoners in Azerbaijan now.