March 30, 2024
Earlier this year, the announcement of Baku politician and independent member of the Milli Majlis (Azerbaijan’s national parliament), Nigar Arpadarai, as the new COP29 High Level Champion caused a stir among the global parliamentary constituency. The host country of COP29 had only been confirmed in the final hours of COP28 and Azerbaijan has the enviable challenge of preparing for a COP in under a year.
GLOBE welcomed the appointment of Ms Arpadarai as the first-ever parliamentarian appointed to the role of High-Level Champion. As we underscored at the first-ever Parliamentary Pavilion at COP28, Parliaments Make COPs Count. We look forward to supporting Ms Arpadarai in her new role and applaud the decision to appoint another prominent woman to succeed the UAE’s COP28 High-Level Champion, Ms Razan Al Mubarak.
Azerbaijan is the first former Soviet republic to host a COP and will play a key role as the transition from COP28 to COP30. The COP29 host country gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. For a brief period after the Russian revolution, Azerbaijan had been the world’s first secular Muslim-majority country and one of the first to grant women the vote. The modern Milli Majlis, the national parliament of the Republic of Azerbaijan was established in 1995. It has 125 MPs and the Speaker of the Milli Majlis, Sahiba Gafarova, is a woman.
At the IPU General Assembly in March 2024, GLOBE had an opportunity to meet with members of the Azerbaijan parliamentary delegation and discuss plans for COP29, and was present when Ms Sevil Mikayilova MP from Azerbaijan introduced the host country’s first video to promote the COP29 climate summit in November 2024.
For GLOBE’s regular newsletter Parliamentarians@COP29 please click here.
