The international community should hold it accountable. In November of this year, COP29, the United Nations Climate Conference, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan. This marks the third year in a row that the event will be hosted by a government with significant fossil fuel reserves and a poor human rights record — notably for...
Civil society organisations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in the United Arab Emirates this week have criticized restrictions on their participation, including alleging that some of their members had been briefly detained at the talks. Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS), a network of civil society groups, said on Wednesday it had...
Democracy Now! speaks with filmmaker Nawal Al-Maghafi about her BBC investigative report which reveals new details about how the United Arab Emirates hired American mercenaries to carry out over 100 assassinations in southern Yemen, targeting politicians, imams and members of civil society. Al-Maghafi interviewed several mercenaries for the first time on camera about how they conducted the targeted...
China’s human rights record faced rare public scrutiny at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, and while Beijing was able to lobby some countries from the Global South to praise human rights conditions in the country, analysts and advocates say its charm offensive has had a limited effect. “A lot of governments...
Blood Gold Report: Key Findings The Kremlin has earned more than US$2.5 billion from trade in African gold since Vladimir Putin launched his full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the Central African Republic (CAR), a Wagner front company has been awarded exclusive rights to the Ndassima mine, the country’s largest gold mine, in return...
Host Country Should Stop Rights Repression, Drop Fossil Fuel Plans. The United Nations should urge the United Arab Emirates to end its human rights repression and eliminate its plans to expand fossil fuel production as countries begin negotiations at the annual UN climate conference in Dubai, Human Rights Watch said today. The UN should also urgently develop...
The need to act on the climate crisis has never been clearer. In 2023, heat records have been shattered around the world. Seemingly every day brings news of extreme weather, imperilling lives. In July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres grimly announced that ‘the era of global boiling has arrived’. In short, there’s a lot at stake as the...
Last month, the European Council proclaimed itself as “the global leader in climate action”. The November 13 EU Foreign Ministers meeting with COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the global climate conference is set to begin later this month, is the first real test of that claim. In a letter to EU foreign ministers...
To keep pretending, year after year, decade after decade, that the U.N. process is working when everyone can see that it is failing, is its own kind of denial. Every year, the world’s governments gather at what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, calls a Conference of the Parties, or COP,...
UAE: leaked recording shows officials intent on limiting public debate at COP28. The Center for Climate Reporting obtained audio in which UAE officials are heard discussing how to restrict public discussion of climate change and human rights. Dozens of unfairly-jailed civil society activists languish behind bars, while draconian laws allow for the arrest of almost...