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Azerbaijan has backtracked after a backlash over the absence of women on the committee behind the UN COP29 climate summit to be held in Baku, where the petrostate is already under pressure as host of the most important international forum to address global warming.
President Ilham Aliyev’s appointment of a 28-member organising committee for COP29 that did not include a single woman last week drew wide criticism from climate leaders, including Spain’s deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera, who said on social media “no woman to host . . . no COP”.
On Friday, Aliyev announced that the expanded committee of 42 organisers would include 12 women.
Some 75 female leaders from business, civil society and academia sent a letter to the president on Friday, urging him to include “as many women as possible” on the committee to ensure the best outcomes for the negotiations.
Many leading women involved in global climate policy — including Laurence Tubiana, one of the architects of the Paris climate agreement, and Catherine McKenna, the former Canadian environment minister, who has been an adviser to the UN secretary-general — joined the call.
The signatories included women from major companies such as Google, Unilever, Microsoft, Amazon and Ingka Group, the owner of Ikea, according to the We Mean Business Coalition campaign group that organised the letter.
María Mendiluce, chief executive of the We Mean Business Coalition, said the speed of Azerbaijan’s response was “warmly welcomed”.
“There is still a long way to go for gender parity to be achieved in the climate negotiations and all our wider communities,” she added.
Among the newly-appointed COP29 women were Sabina Aliyeva, human rights commissioner, and Farah Aliyeva, head of the department for humanitarian policy, diaspora, multiculturalism and religious issues. Among the men added was science and education minister Emin Amrullayev.
The COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev, the 56-year-old minister of ecology and natural resources, spent 26 years working for the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic before joining the assembly in 2010. He has been an Aliyev cabinet minister since 2018.
The choice of Baku as host of COP29, after intervention by Russia in a regional selection, was criticised by climate activists who raised concerns about a petrostate overseeing the event for the second year in a row — following the United Arab Emirates in November 2023 — and about human rights issues.
Women have accounted for just five of the presidents of the 28 UN COPs. At COP28, Sultan al-Jaber, also the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, held the top role, although women made up almost two-thirds of the organising committee.
Female national negotiators have complained about harassment and bullying at preceding UN climate meetings, in particular at COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. It prompted a statement from UN climate chief Simon Stiell that “harassment, be it in the form of sexism, bullying or sexual harassment, is not acceptable in the UNFCCC process”.
McKenna told the FT that the lack of women on the initial committee was “completely unacceptable”, noting that women had been behind many of the most progressive steps on tackling climate change, such as the Paris agreement.
“It is not just that women make up half the population, but it is also because women are pushing the hardest [for action on climate change] — in boardrooms, in the streets, in courtrooms. We need their voices.”
The decision to appoint Baku followed the Russia threat of veto of an EU country holding the event over the bloc’s support of Ukraine.
A suspension of hostilities between Azerbaijan and neighbouring Armenia related to the Nagorno-Karabakh ethnic and territorial conflict paved the way for Baku’s bid to host COP29 being accepted.
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