As COP29 begins, some are expressing concerns about religious freedom in host country Azerbaijan

(RNS) – Global leaders, diplomats and climate advocates are coming together to hammer out climate finance deals at the latest UN Climate Summit held today (Nov. 11) through Nov. 22 in Baku, Azerbaijan. But the host country for the annual summit has come under international scrutiny for human rights and religious freedom abuses, leading some activists to wonder why there hasn’t been more pushback from global climate advocates, including faith groups.

Days before COP29, the climate summit, began, the Azerbaijani government held a summit of religious leaders working on climate issues. calling itself “known for its traditions of tolerance, multicultural values and intercivilizational and interreligious cooperation,” even as outside observers have repeatedly expressed concerns about religious freedom in the former Soviet country.

The government, led by President Ilham Aliyev, is part of a family which has led the Muslim-majority country since 1993, requires religious groups to register with the government to operate legally. According to Azerbaijani watchdog Institute for Peace and Democracy, the number of religious activists held as political prisoners has increased sharply over the past two years, part of a broader escalation of a campaign of repression this has also led to the arrests of journalists and other opposition figures.

The country, largely funded by fossil fuel revenues, has strengthened its military and recently followed through on what the European Parliament did called an “ethnic cleansing” of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakhwhich, although internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, has been governed by ethnic Armenians since the fall of the Soviet Union. Armenians, who track their legacy to the founding of the oldest Christian nation, have drawn attention to the Azerbaijani destruction of their religious sites in the region, just as the Azerbaijani government has done said Armenians have destroyed religious sites in Azerbaijan.

These concerns helped Azerbaijan land on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2024 list of “countries of special concern.” listthe designation for governments that engage in or tolerate “particularly serious” violations of religious freedom.

But when RNS reached out to the faith groups that had a leading presence at recent COPs for comment on how they would approach their work given these religious freedom concerns, most remained silent.

Azerbaijan, red, is located on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. (Map courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

None of the core team of faith groups that organized faith activities at the last COP, the World Evangelical Alliance, the Episcopal Diocese of California and the Muslim Council of Elders, responded to requests for comment.

The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development and the Partnership for Religion and Sustainable Development declined to respond to requests for comment, with PaRD citing its small team and limited resources. Several other faith groups that took on secondary roles also did not respond.

The Rev. John Pawlikowski, professor emeritus of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union, said that in the months leading up to the U.S. election, “there is currently a fear among some in the religious community to publicly criticize the COP” because it would undermine now-President-elect Donald could prompt Trump to withdraw from the process.

The Serbian priest, also a member of the Parliament of the World Religions’ climate action task force, said he was aware of religious actors who had boycotted previous COPs, where there were limits to what participants could say about local human rights and planned to protect human rights to boycott. summit in Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, he said the majority believes in continuing some level of involvement.

As a formal party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Vatican, Pawlikowski said, “could raise the human rights issues and the issues of religious freedom more strongly than it has.”

However, Pawlikowski said that the religious groups participating in the COPs are not ignoring religious freedom, but are simply making a strategic decision not to raise the issue at the COP.

For some religious groups affected by the Azerbaijani government’s repression, the silence of faith groups attending COP29 is a bitter betrayal.

“If something happens to the world’s first Christian nation, they won’t care,” said Arshak Makichyan, an ethnic Armenian climate activist who lost his Russian citizenship after speaking out against the war in Ukraine. The Armenian Apostolic Christian, who said his faith underpins his activism, is an icon of Russia’s climate movement for his solo protests as part of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement and his arrest in Russia for those protests after attending COP25 in 2019.

“What is happening to the Armenians is truly terrible and we need international solidarity,” he said, warning that he worries that Azerbaijan will become emboldened to go to the Armenians. war with Armenia.

The activist sees Armenian issues as a natural part of the COP discussion on indigenous issues. “If you are colonized by Western countries, then it is colonization, but if you are colonized by Turkey or Azerbaijan, then it is not colonization,” he said about the ignorance of Western people about Armenian history, including centuries of Ottoman control and oppression before between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, in what is widely considered a genocide.

Makichyan had planned to return to the COP this year, but he said Azerbaijan denied his visa even after he said the United Nations had approved his accreditation for the event.

Mukhtar Babayev, President of COP29, speaks during an opening plenary session at the COP29 UN Climate Summit, Monday, November 11, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP photo/Peter Dejong)

Azerbaijan’s U.S. Embassy and U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change offices did not respond to RNS requests for comment on the denial of Makichyan’s visa.

Makichyan explained: “I think it is very important to raise the Armenian issue at the conference,” saying that he was motivated to go “even though my grandfather’s uncle was killed in Baku, and even though my grandparents were deported from Nakhchivan,” part of contemporary Azerbaijan.

Makichyan is part of a group calling on the international community at COP29 to demand the release of Armenian and other political prisoners held by the Azerbaijani government, sanctions and the right of return for “Artsakh Armenians to Indigenous Lands,” an end to anti-Armenian destruction of cultural heritage and propaganda and the divestment of Azerbaijani oil, in addition to a commitment to stop detaining COPs in countries with political prisoners.

Azerbaijan has dismissed international concerns about religious freedom in the country as pro-Armenian bias.

Kamal Gasimov, an Islam researcher in Azerbaijan who is currently a visiting professor of Arabic at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, said the USCIRF report should have cited outside sources instead of relying on Armenian scholars to write about Armenian monuments.

Gasimov said the USCIRF report is a “political document,” indicative of relations between Azerbaijan and the US. Some Azeris see the document as proof of US imperialism, while others whose relatives are imprisoned are grateful for it, he said.

Mohamed Elsanousi, a commissioner who joined USCIRF after the deliberation process of the latest report concluded, said: “Our goal here is not really to blame and shame countries. Our goal is to improve religious freedom.”

USCIRF consists of appointees of the U.S. President and congressional leaders. A minority of four disagreed with Azerbaijan’s decision and expressed concern that the country should receive a less stringent designation due to its violations of religious freedom.

Despite the controversy over the report, Gasimov said the Azerbaijani government plays an important role in regulating religion in the Muslim-majority country, adopting an approach from the Soviet Union that is common in post-Soviet countries.

“If you are a registered religious community within the state institution and the state gives you a passport, then you exist. If the state denies your registration, you don’t exist,” he said.

The aim is ‘to make Islam part of the state bureaucracy, making Islam predictable’, but also ‘easily observed’ and ‘controlled’. They also achieve this by “checking the books” and “trying to co-opt the religious leaders, charismatic leaders, (by) offering them government jobs.”

Other religious groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, have not been able to register. Jehovah’s Witnesses also emphasize that the state has failed to enforce stated exemptions from mandatory military service for conscientious objectors, with some believers facing mistreatment and legal penalties.

While USCIRF cited the 2009 Azerbaijani law requiring registration as a major source of the violation of international human rights standards, Gasimov said the Arab Spring protests motivated the government to redouble surveillance in the name of preventing radicalization and legitimized these actions by ‘the security of Azerbaijan with what is happening in the Middle East.”

Azerbaijani watchdog Institute for Peace and Democracy say that the majority of the Muslim-majority country’s 319 political prisoners are “peaceful believers,” amounting to 228, including members of the Muslim Unity Movement and other Muslim theologians. Before the beginning of 2023, the number of religious-political prisoners was below 100.

Elsanousi said USCIRF had some documentation showing that “law enforcement agencies also used and threatened torture, sexual assaults and other forms of ill-treatment against non-conforming Shia Muslims in state custody.”

The Muslim Unity Movement, a Shia group, became popular, according to Gasimov, by mixing their religious discourse with concerns about social issues such as bribery and police brutality.

Makichyan said Azerbaijan has previously used “greenwashing,” or a spin that portrays the country as an environmentalist, to get away with human rights abuses, including against ethnic Armenians.

Looking ahead, he emphasized the importance of religious pluralism. As a Christian who is aware of genocides that indigenous Muslim groups have experienced, “it is very important to be against Islamophobia because hopefully we Armenians will also be able to return to Western Armenia and try to live together with other people,” he said.