QCEA urges release of political prisoners
'COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town on the Red Sea, has been mired in controversy due to the country’s human rights record.'
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) has been participating in informal exchanges with Egyptian civil society and other organisations coordinating action around the UN climate summit COP27 in Egypt this month. The meetings have been held to learn how QCEA can ‘best support local claims and concerns around the summit’, according to QCEA’s latest newsletter Around Europe. This month’s COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town on the Red Sea, has been mired in controversy due to the country’s human rights record. This has led civil society groups to demand the UN to move COP27 from Egypt, citing as an additional factor Egypt’s failure to take action for climate, like reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions or establishing effective environmental protection measures.
Writing in the newsletter, staff from QCEA describe how trade unions and civil society groups active on climate and environmental issues in Egypt have been targeted by authorities, ‘making it likely that Egyptian civil society will face a new wave of repression as COP27 approaches. Environmental and human rights activists are unlikely to be offered any meaningful participation, and there is no guarantee that Egyptian participants will not face reprisals after the summit. The absence of civil society voices will inevitably have an impact on the quality and legitimacy of decisions taken at the summit, further reinforcing the top-down power directionality of climate agreements’.
QCEA is also urging EU and member state delegations to demand the release of political prisoners as a sign of political goodwill. QCEA says: ‘For the results of the summit to have any legitimacy, the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association need to be upheld.’
