| Is Germany’s visa process structurally racist? African delegates have been blocked from attending the Bonn UN climate summit for no good reason. They include climate advocates as well as Ministry officials. They all had UNFCCC accreditation. Many had their flights and accommodation booked. Yet the German government refused them a visa, or simply delayed issuing one, effectively silencing them. Once again, people of colour from the countries and communities most affected by climate change have been excluded from the deliberations and decision-making process – all while big polluters, many of them white men from the global north, are allowed to freely roam the halls of Bonn. These reprehensible and meaningless delays get many African delegates wondering whether Germany is fit to host the UNFCCC. If it cannot honour the most basic of its responsibilities as the host, that is facilitating easy access to visa for accredited delegates, then ECO feels…. Perhaps it is not. ECO has heard some Africans suggest that perhaps the UNFCCC headquarters and the Subsidiary Bodies meetings belong in a more people-friendly country instead, in the global south maybe? These meetings are, after all, where the fate of the most affected countries and communities is being determined. It is vital that representatives from these communities are able to personally engage in the decisions made about their future. Isn’t it odd that delegates are spending time discussing increasing the participation of observers from the global south in the AIM room, when the bare minimum requirement for their participation – the right to travel to Bonn – cannot be guaranteed? Challenges in issuing visa by a (one-off) COP host country is bad enough, but if the permanent host of the UNFCCC and the annual intersessionals is disenfranchising people from the very countries most vulnerable to climate change, that is unacceptable. ECO suggests Germany get its act together, as it is currently not fit to convene such a UN gathering. Structural disenfranchisement and discrimination against delegates from Africa has no place within a United Nations process. So the UN also has a role to play. At a time of notable shrinking civic space and when COPs are overrun by Big Polluter lobbyists, the UNFCCC Secretariat cannot afford to turn a blind eye when voices from developing countries and affected communities are shut out. This disenfranchisement undermines the very legitimacy of these proceedings. |