COP31: Another Story about Repression
Climate summits keep meeting in countries that jail the people climate justice rests on.
On 29 April 2024, Anar Mammadli was on his way to collect his child from nursery in Baku when masked men took him away in a black car. Six months later, Baku welcomed the world to COP29.
Anar Mammadli chaired the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, at the time Azerbaijan's only remaining independent election monitor. Ahead of COP29, he co-founded the Climate of Justice Initiative, with the support of Progress & Change Partnerships, a coalition that set out to use the summit to open space for civil society and climate justice.
That work cost him his freedom ahead of COP29. The UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, said the charges and the length of his detention appeared to be retaliation for Anar's efforts in the run-up to COP29. Libération presented him as the other face of that COP. On 7 September 2026, after 27 months in pre-trial detention, the Baku Court on Grave Crimes sentenced him to 13 years in prison on smuggling, tax and money laundering charges.
We launched the Campaign to End Repression in Azerbaijan in his name after his arrest. Anar Mammadli remains in prison and from prison he now contributes to Progress & Change Partnerships' Thought Circle.
Yesterday, COP31 opened in Antalya. Another story about repression.
‘Four Hosts, One Rating’
Egypt hosted COP27. The United Arab Emirates hosted COP28. Azerbaijan hosted COP29. Türkiye now hosts COP31. Freedom House rates all four countries 'Not Free'. COP32 goes to Addis Ababa in 2027, and Freedom House rates Ethiopia 'Not Free' as well, with a score of 18 out of 100.
How democratic are the countries that host the climate COPs?
V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index, from 0 (least democratic) to 1 (most democratic), for every COP host since COP21 in Paris, 2015 to 2025
Swipe sideways to see the full chart.
Notes from the Faultline · Progress & Change Partnerships
The situation repeats from one host to the next:
- In Egypt, according to the UN human rights office, environmental defenders were intimidated, tracked and barred;
- In Azerbaijan, peaceful protestors, journalists and human rights defenders filled the prisons in the months before COP29;
- In Türkiye, Istanbul's elected mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been in prison since March 2025. Before the NATO summit in Ankara in July, the authorities imposed a 13-day blanket protest ban and arrested more than 200 people. Esra Işık, an environmental human rights defender, was sentenced to more than two years in prison after a peaceful protest against an expropriation order linked to coal mining.
And the stand of the UN institution serving as secretariat for these climate summits repeats, too: silence. As we uncovered in conjunction with COP29, the UN climate summit secretariat considers it somebody else's duty to look into the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly in conjunction with the said summit. Mind-boggling!
The rules of the summit in Antalya reflect this: the binding host agreement between Türkiye and the UN climate secretariat asks participants to respect Turkish law and to stay out of Türkiye's 'internal affairs'. According to Climate Home News, the same clauses featured in the agreements with the UAE and Azerbaijan, disappeared for Brazil's COP30, and have now returned. Amnesty International warned they could hinder human rights defenders and chill freedom of expression and assembly.
With Australia's original candidacy to host COP31, we were hopeful COP31 would be organised with civic space protected from the start and with civil society participation at its heart.
Civic Space is Climate Policy
Climate action depends on people who can speak, organise and go to court: Indigenous peoples protecting their land; villages facing a new mine or pipeline; lawyers challenging permits; journalists documenting pollution; scientists publishing data governments and private sector would prefer to keep quiet. These are the people who hold governments to the pledges they make at COPs.
Global Witness documented the killing of at least 124 land and environmental defenders in 2025: 44 of them were Indigenous, and mining was the industry most linked to the killings. Behind each killing stand many more cases of criminalisation, surveillance and organisations forced to close.
Azerbaijan shows how the chain works: in June 2023, villagers in Soyudlu protested against pollution from a gold mine » the authorities answered with force, then turned on critics, independent media and civil society who supported them » Abzas Media journalists who covered the protests were arrested » Anar was first charged in connection with the same Abzas Media case.
A Shared Interest
Closing civic space serves the oil, gas and mining industries, and the interest runs both ways: governments that jail their critics gain revenue, investment and international standing. Extractive companies gain licences that no court, newspaper or protest will contest. Both sides want the room clear of independent voices.
Recent COPs indeed made this de facto alliance visible:
- At COP28, the summit president, Sultan Al Jaber, was also chief executive of the national oil company ADNOC;
- At COP29, President Ilham Aliyev told delegates that oil and gas were a gift of God. The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition counted at least 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists in Baku, more than the 1,033 delegates sent by the ten most climate-vulnerable countries combined.
Addis Ababa continues the pattern: since late 2024, Ethiopia's civil society authority has suspended five leading human rights organisations, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, the oldest in the country. In July 2024, the same authority shut down more than 1,500 organisations. In March 2026, 41 states at the UN Human Rights Council voiced concern at the further shrinking of civic space in Ethiopia.
What Has to Change
We can break this cycle, and move the summits away from presidencies that stifle media and civil society to better serve the interests of the extractive industry and the oil and gas giants.
The choice of host must indeed become a human rights question. The UN climate body should treat it as one: in 2024, we argued in Global Citizen that the UNFCCC has a duty as an organisation belonging to the UN family and bound by international law to protect civil society participation at COPs and indeed ensure that host agreements are compliant with international human rights law. Civic space should count in the choice of host, assessed with independent civil society from that country and governments attending should raise political prisoners by name, in public and in private.
This week in Antalya, delegations negotiate the future of the climate. Anar Mammadli will spend those same days in prison in Baku, Esra Işık is appealing a prison sentence for a peaceful protest against a coal project, Ekrem İmamoğlu remains behind bars near Istanbul.
It is high time to ask about them in Antalya and challenge the COP32 host.