Threats of Media Censorship Cloud COP29

President Ilham Aliyev of COP29 host country Azerbaijan has jailed at least 13 journalists, drawing protests from international press freedom groups. Protestors have been silenced, too. Photo: UNEP/Ahmed Nayim Yussuf via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

WatchDog Opinion: Threats of Media Censorship Cloud COP29

By Joseph A. Davis

Press freedom is only one of the big things to worry about at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan. But it exemplifies what is going wrong with the world’s attempt to slow climate heating.

Azerbaijan has largely eliminated press freedom within its own borders. In fact, Reporters Without Borders ranks it 164th out of the 180 nations in its latest Press Freedom Index.

 

Key is how Azerbaijan might limit

free expression among the many

nongovernmental groups lobbying

COP29 delegates and journalists.

 

The immediate question is how this will affect reporters from outside nations working at the U.N.’s Conference of Parties in the capital city of Baku. Also key is how Azerbaijan might limit free expression among the many nongovernmental groups lobbying COP29 delegates and journalists with their messages.

In recent years, the annual talks under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change have in fact become a “media event” — in which public perception becomes more important than saving the planet.

Hundreds of lobbyists, advocates and partisans swamp the UNFCCC event, hoping to spread their messages in side events, demonstrations, exhibits, parties and press conferences. Some 3,972 news media attended COP28 last year.

 

Petrostate as COP host?

Azerbaijan is an authoritarian petrostate. It is currently considered an ally of Vladimir Putin’s Russia — although that binational relationship is hardly a simple one. It is also the third authoritarian regime in a row to host a climate COP, the others being Egypt and Abu Dhabi. It’s also the second petrostate in a row.

Since ending the use of gas, oil and other fossil fuels is the main way the world can stop climate change, petrostates are hardly the ideal place to host a climate COP. The host country manages and shapes a COP meeting, its agenda and its results.

Freedom of the press will not be much of an issue for any remaining independent media in Azerbaijan; they are already in jail. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev saw to that.

In the past year, Aliyev has jailed at least 13 journalists from his own country — drawing protests from international press freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists. Others had already been jailed. Azerbaijani protestors have been silenced, too.

 

Questions about participants’ rights

More insidious, perhaps, is his effort to spin and tilt what the many foreign journalists will see, hear and report about COP29. Much of that can be done more subtly.

During preparatory meetings for COP29 earlier in 2024, the group Human Rights Watch tried to urge Aliyev and organizers to open things up. The group called on Azerbaijan “to allow civil society to demand and scrutinize climate action before, during, and after the conference.” Little came of it.

 

In January 2024, Aliyev announced

the members of the COP29 organizing

committee. All 28 of them were men.

 

In January 2024, Aliyev announced the members of the COP29 organizing committee. All 28 of them were men. Consternation ensued. Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC executive secretary for the historic Paris Agreement in 2015, had called the all-male panel “shocking and unacceptable.” After the pushback, Aliyev added 12 women to the group (still fewer than half).

Human Rights Watch also criticized the COP29 host country agreement between UNFCCC and Azerbaijan, which sets expectations for the November meeting. The group got a copy of the agreement even though it hadn’t been made public. It called the agreement “replete with significant shortcomings and ambiguities on the protections for participants’ rights.”

Meanwhile, Maxine Joselow in late October reported in The Washington Post that an “army of bots” has been posting favorable publicity about Azerbaijan on Elon Musk’s social platform X over the past month. The researcher who found these fake accounts did not document who owned or originated them. Guess.

 

Protection for protests? For journalists?

While each COP is a little different, we can learn a lot by comparing the conference’s “blue” and “green” zones. The blue zone is where the formal meeting of national delegates takes place. It is only open to accredited delegates — and the press. This is where the media can get draft texts of proposed documents. It is managed by the UNFCCC itself.

The green zone, on the other hand, is for nondelegates, i.e., those without official accreditation. This is where you will find businesses, the public, youth groups, civil society, academia and artists. Accredited media and delegates can go there, too.

Climate COP veterans will tell you that there is another zone — in the public streets in the host city — where larger events like protests and demonstrations often take place. These are not necessarily authorized by the COP host. They are meant to be media events.

Human Rights Watch advocate Myrto Tilianaki notes that the COP29 host country agreement “states that while conference participants ‘shall enjoy immunity for legal process in respect of words spoken or written and any act performed by them,’ a separate clause requires them to respect Azerbaijani laws and not interfere in its ‘internal affairs.’”

Does that mean they can arrest journalists for criticizing Azerbaijan?

[Editor’s Note: Follow COP29 and climate change headlines with EJToday. And for more on covering climate change, see our Topics on the Beat page, along with our Climate Change Resource Guide and a special report on Covering Climate Solutions.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 41. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.