Today, the COP29 Presidency held an online meeting with the COP29 NGO Coalition, where COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev answered questions from members of the local and international NGO community.

The meeting was also attended by the COP29 Climate Change High-Level Champion, Nigar Arpadarai; the COP29 Youth Climate Champion, Leyla Hasanova; the Liaison Officer with the UNFCCC Observer Organizations and representative of the Foreign Ministry of the Azerbaijan Republic, Shahriyar Hajiyev; and the COP29 Presidency’s Liaison Officer at the UNFCCC Secretariat (Bonn), Toghrul Feyziyev, among others.

The meeting provided foreign NGOs with an opportunity for open dialogue with the COP29 Presidency and Azerbaijan’s civil society, that was welcomed by participants.

The COP29 NGO Coalition was set up in July 2024 on the initiative of the Azerbaijan National NGO Forum and was soon joined by 260 NGOs from 60 countries. It provides a platform to ensure civil society organisations from across the globe can feed in their views to this year’s climate negotiations. Ninety per cent of the NGOs within the COP29 NGO Coalition are affiliated with the UNFCCC constituencies , while eight of the nine UNFCCC constituencies are represented in the Coalition. The Coalition includes umbrella groups that bring together hundreds of NGOs. The Azerbaijan National NGO Forum is an umbrella group from Azerbaijan represented in the Coalition.