COMMENTARY
—--
by A. Mahdieu Savage |5 November 2022 |
-----
COP27, the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will run from 6 to 18 November 2022. The event will take place at the Sharm El Sheikh resort in Egypt.
It is a fact that climate change threatens all nations, but some are more so than others. To keep global temperatures below the tipping point, according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions need drastic reduction now. The goal of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius is almost impossible. In the absence of rigour and commitment, global temperatures may rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. At COP27, human survival is undoubtedly at stake.
So, should nations take a step back from highlighting the host nation’s atrocious human rights record considering the urgency of the climate debate? Absolutely not! Wherever they occur, the global community should not ignore egregious human rights violations.
Human rights abuses have been a hallmark of Egyptian governments for many decades, and president Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s is, without a doubt, one of the worst in the world. As well as his political opponents, he has ruthlessly suppressed the activities of journalists, environmentalists, human rights activists, writers and academics. The number of people incarcerated for their activism is in the tens of thousands. One key reason some people are boycotting COP27.
The imprisonment of an Egyptian-British writer, activist, and blogger stands out in this landscape of degraded rights. After Egyptian authorities denied British consular officers permission to visit Alaa-Abd El- Fattah in April this year, he began his hunger strike. He will turn 41 on November 18. As COP27 approaches, Alaa’s case has been a key topic of political discourse in the UK. Lawmakers from the House of Lords and Members of Parliament have urged the British government to do all it could to prevent him from dying after his prolonged hunger strike. In 2014, the Egyptian authorities imprisoned Alaa for his activism for five years. On trumped-up charges of spreading ‘fake news,’ they sent him to prison again in December 2019 for five years.
There is now a chorus of Nobel laureates joining the campaign, according to The Guardian (Thursday 3 November 2022). A letter signed and published by 15 Nobel Prize laureates has urged government delegates attending COP27 to call out the horrendous human rights violations around the world, especially in Egypt. The letter specifically highlights Alaa’s case, noting “he has spent the last 10 years — a quarter of his life — in prison, for words he has written.”
Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, is a mathematics professor at Cairo University. Ahdaf Soueif, his maternal uncle, is an accomplished writer and political commentator in Egypt.