The first week of the United Nations climate summit, or COP27, in Egypt ended with more elephants being pushed into the centre of the room. 

It made the dominant global headline coming out of COP27 this week about the call to free the pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah who was imprisoned in 2104 on charges of joining a terrorist group and spreading false news. The 40-year-old Egyptian-British citizen was released after five years, only to be rearrested after six months, in 2019. Abd el-Fattah, a writer and software developer, was a key figure in the 2011 uprisings in Egypt that led to the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for 30 years. 

Since the beginning of April, Abd el-Fattah has been on a hunger strike and stopped drinking water on Sunday 6 November 2022, to coincide with the opening of COP27 taking place in the coastal town of Sharm El-Sheikh.

On Tuesday 8 November, the global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice used their morning session to host Abd el-Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif, reaffirming the position that there can be no climate justice without human rights. 

A day earlier, South African Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network, kicked off briefings, calling on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to use his presence at COP27 to “come help free Alaa” and other political prisoners.

Sief, herself a political activist and filmmaker, told a packed room how her mother has been waiting outside prison gates for proof that her son is alive over the past few days, with nothing forthcoming from the Egyptian authorities.

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Seif called for the release of her brother to face a fair judicial inquiry in the UK and later stressed that all legal, rational routes in Egypt to fight for her brother’s release have been exhausted. She said: “I’m not talking only about my family – the generation of the Arab Spring has been paying the price for nine years now. We are a generation that is tired, exhausted and we have languished,” she said, having also served an 18-months sentence that ended in December 2021. Human Rights groups believe there are thousands of activists who are languishing in Egyptian jails.

According to Amnesty International, Egyptian authorities released 766 prisoners in a reactivation of a Presidential Pardons Committee in April but it added in a statement: “Egypt’s security agencies continue to use extrajudicial powers to determine which prisoners are released and have blocked the releases of thousands of prisoners arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their human rights.”

In Seif’s Q&A session at COP, she was heckled by an Egyptian member of parliament, Amr Darwish. It resulted in Darwish being removed from the briefing room by UN police. Darwish did not want Seif to translate his question in Arabic when he had asked why the family had resorted to turning to foreign pressure to raise the issue of her brother’s release.

Ahead of COP, high-profile climate activists, including Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein, announced their boycotts of COP27 in Egypt because of the country’s human rights record. In April, Klein wrote on the site “Literary Hub” about the publication of a collection of writings by Abd el-Fattah.  

She wrote: “Alaa, is a student of the South African freedom struggle, and in particular the Freedom Charter—a document that laid out a roadmap for collective freedom written under one of the most repressive periods of Apartheid rule; a document whose meaning and import were magnified by the raw difficulty of bringing the text into being. This text is also a product of revolutionary effort, of subterfuge and hope”.

Egyptian human rights activist Hoosam Bahgat, who is also the founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and former investigative journalist at the independent liberal publication Mada Masr. He said to Daily Maverick after Seif’s address that COP27, hosted in Egypt, is “an opportunity for the world to find out what is happening in Egypt. For years we have had a worsening human rights crisis in the country”, he said of the current regime.

As repression in Egypt increases, so does UK cooperation with its regime

He also said his government has refused to release accurate numbers of exactly how many detainees have been jailed. But said he remained defiant to fight on, adding: “I am an Egyptian; I live in Egypt; I understand that change will not come if the fight does not continue.”

COP27’s first week got off to this fiery start, clearly inserting the sideline events of the intersection of human rights and climate change into the broader agenda. Another thing that could also not be missed in this first week was the outcry by many delegates about the high prices and limited options for food and water. There are also limited spaces for protests of larger groups and even a lack of shaded areas. It discourages people to gather in the heat of the day.

There was also a bizarre move on Thursday 10 November when COP president Sameh Shoukry set an instant unilateral new ruling that all vendors had to give free drinks to conference attendees and had to reduce food prices by 50%. 

Other complaints and concerns within the media centre have also swirled around blocked access to news websites that are considered critical of the state. Some activists have commented about onerous visa processes, raising concerns that this has amounted to another layer of exclusion in open participation in the climate summit. One activist from Kenya said he had to produce police clearance for his application to be approved. 

Price gouging has been slammed at COP27, forcing the COP presidency in Egypt to announce on Thursday that all vendors at the UN climate summit must cut prices by 50% and for all soft drinks to be made free. (Photo: Ufrieda Ho)

In addition, accommodation in the tourism paradise of Sharm El-Sheikh has shot up into price-gouging territory, meaning fewer activists and independent media have been able to attend or to stay for the full duration of the two weeks of negotiations. Sharm El-Sheikh is also a six-hour drive from Cairo; as a result every few minutes of the first week of COP27, there is a carbon-emitting plane flying overhead meant to fill the conference with an estimated 40,000 people. 

Added to this has been mounting criticism that greenwashing has taken on a deeper shade of sham at COP gathering, threatening to make UN climate summits little more than glossy trade fairs. Pavilion spaces come with a hefty price tag, it shuts out many who can’t afford to be represented or forces some to partner with corporates. South Africa’s own country pavilion displays its National Business Initiative partners, which includes the big polluters of mines and fossil companies.

Big polluters must cough up and the green-washing needs to be called out, say activists

The final week of COP27 will be about how to move beyond gimmicks, slogans and pleasant noises to thrash out an agreement that recognises that climate change cuts into every element of life. It makes any hope of a significant agreement one that must recognise how this intersects with people’s lived realities, complex challenges and civil liberties. DM/OBP

Ufrieda Ho is part of the Danida Reporting from the African Frontlines of Climate Change fellowship programme.