Thousands of experts cannot attend the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow, according to several NGOs, which denounced, on Wednesday, the access restrictions imposed by the organizers, a situation that risks damaging credibility of the conference.

According to the rules of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, civil society organizations can attend these global climate meetings as observers, including inside the negotiating rooms to allow for transparency of the climate. process.

The “most inclusive” conference?

Their role is essential especially for the countries of the South, after decades of broken promises. According to Teresa Anderson, head of ActionAid International, only four representatives of the thousands of NGOs accredited for COP26 were authorized to monitor the negotiations. “Preventing civil society from monitoring governments and holding them to account can have real consequences for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, who are suffering,” she said.

COP26 has been postponed for a year due to the pandemic, and is disrupted by the rules related to Covid-19, while the countries of the South have not yet benefited from wide access to vaccines.

The UK, host of the conference, had offered delegates to provide them with vaccines, but some delegates could not afford to pay for hotels to undergo the quarantine.

However, COP26 President Alok Sharma has repeatedly assured that he wants a "most inclusive" conference.

Anger among observers

But the reality experienced by thousands of experts, some of whom have made the journey only to end up watching meetings and press conferences online, is different.

“It is a disaster to see civil society not being able to access crucial meetings and many of its representatives not even being able to enter the COP site,” said Mohamed Adow, think tank Power Shift Africa.

“Members of civil society in the poorest countries were told that this COP would be inclusive so they made the trip to make the voices of their communities heard, and now that they are here, they are told that the only way attending the sessions is via an online platform that barely works, ”he denounced.

Since the start of the conference on Sunday, delegates have had to queue up in long lines, sometimes over an hour, to go through security checks.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson assured that the organizers "were doing everything possible to make sure everything went smoothly."

This does not prevent "anger" among observers, underlines Sebastien Duyck, lawyer at the Center for International Environment Law.

"The restrictions linked to Covid cannot justify the fact that the network (of NGOs) does not have access to the negotiations".

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