Civil society constituencies participating in the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, shared an open letter with all Parties to the Convention, raising urgent concerns over what appears to be the UNFCCC Secretariat’s arbitrary and escalating censorship of peaceful expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The letter – signed by the Women and Gender Constituency, YOUNGO, and Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations – the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) and Climate Action Network (CAN), calls attention to the Secretariat’s recent decision to prohibit the use of the phrase “End the Siege” during a planned action at SB62 in Bonn, despite allowing language such as “end the genocide.”
The UNFCCC Secretariat cited the need to “maintain a neutral and constructive environment,” but civil society actors reject the idea that silence in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe constitutes neutrality.
Tasneem Essop, Executive Director, Climate Action Network International, said: “Let’s be clear: the UNFCCC Secretariat is not neutral – it’s policing civil society while the rest of the UN system, including the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, openly call for an end to the siege of Gaza. When our banners are censored for using the same language as UN leaders, it’s not about rules – it’s about politics. The UNFCCC is embarrassingly out of step with the rest of the UN and with fundamental human rights. We refuse to be complicit in this erasure of the truth.”
The letter states: “Silence is not neutrality. To censor calls to ‘End the Siege’ is to condone it. The climate crisis cannot be addressed in isolation from broader struggles for justice and human rights.”
The letter
To: All Parties to the UNFCCC
Cc: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat
Bonn, 20th June 2025
Subject: Civil Society Protest Against UNFCCC’s Arbitrary Censorship of Solidarity with Palestine
Your Excellencies,
We write to you today with grave concern and indignation.
As civil society, we have been a part of the UNFCCC for close to three decades. Our engagement has included advocating for and bringing voices of peoples and communities on the frontlines through actions and press conferences inside the UNFCCC amongst others. For the last two years in the UNFCCC sessions, COP’s and SB’s, we have faced an escalating pattern of arbitrary censorship from the UNFCCC Secretariat – specifically targeting expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian peoples.
Despite our repeated efforts to navigate and comply with an increasingly ambiguous and inconsistent set of restrictions, the Secretariat has continued to impose arbitrary limits on our collective rights. Legitimate, peaceful expressions of solidarity – statements, words, signs, and slogans that align with international human rights and international humanitarian law – have been censored or blocked.
This situation has reached a new and deeply troubling low. The UNFCCC Secretariat, in a response to an application for a Palestine solidarity action in the venue of SB62, communicated that they could not authorise the use of the phrase “End the Siege” in the banners and any accompanying text. As they did not object to the other phrases we use, including “end the genocide”, their focus on the siege wording is unusual and perplexing. This further demonstrates the arbitrariness of their decision-making.
The reason provided by the UNFCCC Secretariat was their need to “maintain a neutral and constructive environment that supports open dialogue among Parties”, and authorisation must be assessed in light of the current context. We struggle to understand how a clamp down on the calling out of an ongoing and well-documented humanitarian catastrophe can be considered neutral, particularly when the UN Secretary General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and representatives of other UN bodies have called for the same thing using the same language. In addition, a majority of states who are also Parties to the UNFCCC process have voted for a resolution in the UN General Assembly demanding an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the blockade in Gaza. To silence the call to “End the Siege” is to condone it.
This is no longer a question of procedure or neutrality. It is picking a side, and in this case, a side that does not align with the UN’s own values and international humanitarian law. Civil society has decided to end our negotiations on Palestinian Solidarity actions with the Secretariat that compromises our rights to civic space and freedom of expression within this space. We refuse to accept a decision that directly contradicts the rights and freedoms that the UN was founded to protect. We have therefore decided to make our grievances public in the hope that all people of conscience will support basic human rights and bring it to the attention of Parties because the UNFCCC Secretariat’s attempts at silencing us is done in the name of Parties. .
The climate crisis is inseparable from questions of justice and human rights. The Paris Agreement itself is emphatic that “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights […]”
The Secretariat’s refusal to acknowledge an unfolding crime against humanity, together with its active suppression of calls to end the genocide and siege, and doing so in the name of Parties in the UNFCCC, has deeply shaken our confidence in this body’s ability to safeguard humanity’s future. This is a sentiment that echoes far beyond these walls, and risks making multilateralism irrelevant to humanity.
The UNFCCC Secretariat’s narrow understanding of climate, ignoring its intersections with civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, not only is contrary to the Convention and the Paris Agreement but will lead to a failure in finding systematic and sustained solutions to the climate crisis.
We appeal to Parties to reaffirm the rights of civil society, particularly our freedom of expression in calling out a genocide and the vested interests that uphold this as well as the climate crisis.
Silence is not neutrality.
Sincerely,
Women and Gender Constituency (WGC)
Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations – Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (ENGO/DCJ)
Environment Non-Governmental Organisations – Climate Action Network (ENGO/CAN)
Children and Youth Constituency (YOUNGO)