COP27 will put Biden’s human rights agenda on a collision course with his climate change agenda.
U.N. climate summit in November, Egypt has publicly touted its commitment to curb carbon emissions and framed itself as a leader in supporting the developing world’s adaptation to new climate shocks. But behind the scenes, the Egyptian government has cracked down on environmental activists in the country through harassment, intimidation, and arrests, according to interviews with environmental experts and a new report from an international human rights watchdog.
Egypt’s role as the host of the 27th U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP27, is expected to shed fresh light on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s widespread crackdown on the country’s civil society, including environmental advocates, posing a vexing foreign-policy challenge for major democratic powers seeking to advance ambitious climate goals even if it means cooperating with some of the world’s most repressive autocratic regimes. For U.S. President Joe Biden, the upcoming COP27 summit puts his human rights policy on a possible collision course with his climate policy.
“There’s this underlying tension between two supposedly different realms: human rights on one side and robust climate action on the other side,” said Richard Pearshouse, the director of environment and human rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), an advocacy group. “Now we’re seeing that tension really play out.”
Human rights groups have sharply criticized the Biden administration for walking back the president’s stated commitments on human rights, including with Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia in July after initially vowing to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a “pariah” for his role in the assassination of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. Biden has also caught flak from the progressive flank of his Democratic Party for resisting some cuts to a tranche of annual U.S. military aid to Egypt in light of Sisi’s record on human rights—after criticizing his predecessor Donald Trump for gifting Sisi “blank checks.”“There’s a great deal of hypocrisy from Western democracies and powerful countries in the world when it comes to human rights in Egypt in general,” said one Egyptian environmental activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the Egyptian government.
Even two months out from the upcoming U.N. climate summit, human rights groups have begun quietly lobbying the office of Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, to publicly castigate Sisi’s government over its human rights record and raise the case of detained Egyptian activists during COP27 meetings, according to three people briefed on the matter. (The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.)
HRW released a new report this week accusing the Egyptian government of “severely curtail[ing]” environmental groups’ abilities to do their job, through harassment, arrests, and intimidation, forcing some activists to flee the country. Other environmental advocacy groups voiced concern that the Egyptian government is limiting the number of civil society groups that will be allowed to attend COP27 and tightly controlling planned protests, relegating only limited demonstrations in a cordoned-off area on the margins of the conference, which will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula from Nov. 6 to 18.
“It’s always critically important for civil society to have access to COP meetings and have their perspectives heard both inside the COP and outside of it to really drive governments to take more aggressive action on climate change,” said David Waskow, the director of the World Resources Institute’s International Climate Initiative.
The Egyptian government has dismissed the new HRW report. “It is deplorable and counterproductive to issue such a misleading report, at a time where all efforts should be consolidated to ensure the convening of a successful COP that guarantees the implementation of global climate commitments,” Ahmed Abu Zeid, the spokesperson for Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.
Even with a wave of criticism directed at the Sisi government in the run-up to COP27, it’s unclear whether leaders from the United States or other top democracies will publicly raise Cairo’s human rights record or crackdowns on environmental groups during the climate summit.
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