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Tens of thousands of people from around the globe will gather next week for COP29, the annual UN climate summit, in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku.

But as each year’s summit has produced its own set of promises, plans and paperwork to chase, the rationale for these discussions can be hard to follow.

Here’s what you need to know about why COP, short for Conference of the Parties, matters:

Why do we have a yearly COP?

Because climate change will affect every country, regardless of whether it contributed to the problem, it demands global solutions that can address the diversity of needs across countries.

In signing the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that launched the global negotiations, the parties that agreed to it took pains to differentiate between the wealthy nations that caused the bulk of warming and poorer countries that suffer disproportionately from it.

Put another way, the talks are framed around the idea that the countries that benefited the most from industrializing should take the most responsibility for dealing with the warming that resulted.

Addressing that imbalance has become more difficult as developing countries’ economies have grown and rich nations juggle competing costs including war.

What can a yearly summit achieve?

The summit provides a place for countries to discuss solutions, including energy policies, financing schemes or funding needs.

Nearly every summit is also attended by world leaders, giving an important signal that their countries are committed to the UNFCCC goals. The leaders' presence also helps countries hold one another accountable for past promises.

Importantly, the exercise has seen countries counting and reporting their emissions and has helped move hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid to developing nations.

By requiring decisions by consensus, the process also ensures strong global support for agreed actions, improving the chances these actions will be implemented.

But the pace of progress has been too slow to contain the rise in global temperatures. Since COP summits began in 1995, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, meaning the world is on track for extreme climate change.

Proponents of the UNFCCC process say there is no alternative for negotiating major socioeconomic changes to try to limit global warming.

What will we get out of COP29?

This year’s summit is hoping for a few headline agreements: a new annual climate finance target, a deal to get multilateral carbon credit markets working, and more aid money pledged for countries already hit by costly climate disasters.

Beyond that, negotiators will continue to work on technical agreements that build on work done at previous summits.

Outside the formal COP framework, groups of countries could launch their own initiatives or pledge funding for specific projects. Companies will likely announce commercial deals related to climate action, while financiers try to raise cash for climate investments.

What is Azerbaijan’s role in COP29?

Azerbaijan held the presidency of COP29 this year when the rotating COP presidency fell to Central and Eastern Europe.

Next year Brazil will serve as Latin America’s host for COP30.

As summit host, a country works the entire year to steer pre-summit negotiations and lobby other governments for ambitious action. This gives the presidency an important part in defining the summit’s priorities.

What else happens at a COP?

Beyond the country negotiations, the COP summit offers a chance for anyone to try to draw attention - or funding—to their cause.

Hundreds of side events see activists and scientists rubbing shoulders with industry lobbyists and banking heavyweights.

Public-facing conference stages host panel discussions on topics from ocean acidification to designing carbon offset projects.

An exhibition hall, dubbed the ‘Green Zone’, features discussions led by national delegations, non-profit organizations and corporations.

While some summits have seen big organized protests, such as the rally of thousands outside of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, the last two conferences in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have allowed for protests only in designated, roped-off areas.

Azerbaijan, which also has banned public protests, will likely see little civic action outside of the high-security conference site.

Reuters

The Nepali Congress (NC) has finalized Sabita Budha from Rahadev, Ward No 8, as its candidate for the Vice-chair position in Sarkegad Rural Municipality, Humla, in the upcoming by-elections on Dec 1. Basant Rokaya, the NC’s district Vice-chair, confirmed Budha’s nomination, making NC the first major party to announce a candidate for the post.

The other major parties, CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre), have yet to finalize their candidates. According to UML district secretary Tirtharaj Bohara, UML is conducting door-to-door campaigns across Sarkegad’s eight wards. Similarly, CPN (Maoist Centre) is prioritizing candidate selection, said district secretary Dharmaraj Bohra.

The Vice-chair seat became vacant following the passing of Chandra Singh Karki in a road accident. Karki, previously elected through an alliance between NC and CPN (Maoist Centre), had held the position since the last local elections.

President Ram Chandra Paudel is set to depart for Baku, Azerbaijan, today to participate in the 29th UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP29) at the invitation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Leading a senior Nepali delegation, Paudel will address the ‘World Leaders Climate Action Summit’ on Nov 12.

Nepal will also host a high-level session on Nov 13, led by President Paudel, to highlight the country’s climate agenda. Additionally, a dedicated meeting on “Addressing Climatic Loss and Damage in Mountainous Regions” will be held to focus on issues critical to Nepal.

One of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations, Nepal aims to bring attention to the impacts of climate-induced floods and landslides in regions like Melamchi, Mustang, Kanchanpur, and Kathmandu Valley. Nepal’s COP29 presentation will outline its National Adaptation Programme, a long-term climate strategy under the UNFCCC framework.

The COP29 conference will run from Nov 11-22, with President Paudel expected to return to Nepal on Nov 15.

Today's weather across Nepal is expected to remain partly cloudy in the hilly regions, while the rest of the country will experience mainly fair skies, according to the Weather Forecasting Division. The weather pattern is influenced by westerly winds and local atmospheric conditions.

Light rain, with occasional thunder and lightning, is likely in several hilly areas, and some high-altitude regions may see light snowfall. Tonight, similar conditions are expected, with partly cloudy skies in the hills and fair weather elsewhere. Light rain and snow may continue in select hilly and mountainous areas through the night.

Mike Carey, a Republican with extensive knowledge of Nepal and a co-chair of the Nepal Caucus, has been elected to the US Congress, representing Ohio’s 15th District. Carey received 192,477 votes (53 percent), defeating Democratic candidate Adam Miller, who garnered 148,452 votes (43 percent).

Carey, born in 1971, attended the Marion Military Institute and served as a US Army officer. He also spent over two decades as an executive with one of America’s largest privately owned energy companies based in Ohio, where he was known for advocating energy independence and reforming the country’s energy policies.

Carey has consistently supported the Nepali community, earning recognition and honors from several Nepali organizations for his contributions. His election to Congress further solidifies his commitment to fostering ties between the US and the Nepali community.

Voters had the chance this election to break the highest glass ceiling in American politics by electing Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president. Instead, they returned Donald Trump to the White House, a comeback that relied on significant—even somewhat improved—support among women.

Some female voters on Wednesday mourned the missed opportunity to send a woman to the Oval Office and wondered when, if ever, it might happen.

“I am just aghast,” said Precious Brady-Davis, a Black transgender woman who’d just won a two-year term on a Chicago-area water management board—but her joy in that was tempered. “I am disappointed in my fellow Americans that, once again, we did not elect a qualified woman to the presidency.”

Those who supported Trump—like Katherine Mickelson, a 20-year-old college student from Sioux Falls, South Dakota—said the race came down to values and to issues like the economy, not gender. Even Harris herself sought her place in history without dwelling on her gender.

“While I think a lot of women would like to see a female president, myself included,” Mickelson said, “we aren’t just going to blindly vote for a woman.”

Despite the history-making potential of Harris’ campaign, she wasn’t able to expand on President Joe Biden’s 2020 support among women to cement a win, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Fifty-three percent of women supported Harris, compared with 46 percent for Trump—slightly narrower than Biden’s advantage among them in 2020.

The prospect of electing the first female president didn’t rank high as a motivator for voters. Only about 1 in 10 voters said the fact that Harris would be the first woman was the single most important factor for their vote, while about one-quarter said it was an important driver, but not the most important.

Denise Martin in Georgia had a grim view: “I really feel like the majority of Americans still aren’t ready for a woman. They are so short-sighted.” That included, she said, some fellow female voters.

Women were more likely than men to say electing the first female president was at least a factor in their vote, VoteCast showed, though few said it was the main driver and about four in ten women said it wasn’t a factor.

Black women were especially motivated by the potential for the first female president—about a third said it was the most important factor.

Maya Davis theorized that Harris’ identity as a Black and South Asian woman “absolutely” played a role in her defeat. As a Black woman herself, the 27-year-old North Carolina attorney said she’s constantly forced to prove herself.

“I don’t think there’s anything she could have done differently, unfortunately,” she said of Harris. “Maybe not be a woman.”

Female supporters of Trump, 78—who adopted a hypermasculine campaign style, used sexist tropes and vowed to protect women “whether they like it or not”—said they found his rhetoric perhaps unfortunate or hyperbolic, but less troubling than concerns about the economy, immigration and abortion.

Krissy Bunner of Greenville, South Carolina, called Trump a “promoter of women” and said the future is “so much brighter” for them because Trump was elected.

“He does so much, you know, for us,” the 56-year-old said. She described women who favored Harris as misled by the media, and said Trump’s stringent border policies and stance on barring transgender athletes from women’s sports would benefit all women.

Virginia King, 19, of Dallas, spoke about Trump’s unscripted nature. “He’s just kind of outspoken about what he thinks and what he does, whereas other people hide it,” she said. “It’s probably not ideal, but it doesn’t make me not support him.”

Other women found the former president’s bombast ominous and feared a second Trump term would further threaten their rights two years after his Supreme Court appointees helped overturn the right to abortion.

“All of women’s protections are going to go away if you don’t protect the basic fundamental issue of democracy to begin with,” said retired teacher Mary Ellen Brown, 66, of Newtown, Pennsylvania. Brown said she dressed in black Wednesday and feared her family was losing faith in their country.

After Harris stepped into the race in July, Trump doubled down on banter that many found paternalistic—and worse—as he tried to close the gender gap. He also offended many by calling Harris “stupid” or “lazy.” His running mate, JD Vance, called the vice president “trash.”

The discourse didn’t bother Nina Christina, a North Carolina nurse more worried about feeding her children. Christina, 35, voted for Trump and said she just hopes to avoid being “underwater.”

“It shouldn’t be this difficult to survive in everyday life,” said Christina, adding that Harris already had a chance to fix the economy.

Harris, 60, bypassed the suffragist white worn by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and rarely spoke about the glass ceiling during a frenzy of energetic campaign stops since becoming the Democratic nominee in July.

Her supporters welcomed the upbeat mood after what they saw as a series of setbacks for women’s progress in recent years: a workload surge during the pandemic, when children were sent home from school in 2020; the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022; and the steady drumbeat of #MeToo cases, some lodged against Trump.

In Minneapolis, 90-year-old Audrey Wesley—who’s voted in more presidential elections than she can count off the top of her head—said she’d been hoping a Harris victory would usher in a bipartisan resurgence.

“I can’t believe a man that has done this much against the law can even be running for president,” Wesley said, referring to the litany of legal battles, including sexual assault allegations, Trump brings to the office. “Our system is broken.”

Relatively few voters said Trump’s legal cases were a major factor in their decision-making this election, according to AP VoteCast. Only about a quarter of Trump voters said the legal cases involving Trump were at least an important factor, but about eight in ten Harris voters did.

Some women voters experienced the gender gap within their own homes or families—women like Dee Bertino, 55, of Moorestown, New Jersey, who spent her first date with her husband arguing about trickle-down economics. Twenty-five years and two sons later, she mailed in a ballot for Harris while her husband voted for Trump.

Bertino said her top concern was women’s rights, but she also bemoaned the lack of civility she felt Trump had unleashed. Her husband, Bob, 58, with whom she runs a sexual health company, also supported abortion rights, she said, but felt the economy, immigration and other issues were more important.

Having a woman president is “not that big” for me, Bertino said. “But I truly believe that our democracy is facing its largest threat in history, and Trump must be stopped.”

Bertino and her husband hotly debate politics and the election. That’s not true for Martin, in Peachtree City, Georgia,

Martin, 61, is a flight attendant. Her partner is a pilot. He voted for Trump, for the third time. She voted for Harris. Speaking about politics is fraught and painful, and they know to avoid it.

When Clinton lost in 2016, Martin said, she was beside herself and couldn’t talk to her partner for days. This year, Martin had hoped to privately celebrate the ascension of the first female president, a woman she supported not because she was a woman, but because she was the right candidate: “so thoughtful, so smart, so well-spoken.”

But the news did not seem good, so she went to bed. She awoke to see the race called for Trump, and grew tearful. Among her chief concerns: the future of democracy; health care, especially reproductive care for young women; respect for science; climate policy; and the United States’ standing in the world.

As Clinton herself has said, Harris didn’t need to emphasize the gender issue, because the public has grown more accustomed to seeing female candidates. Seven women, representing three political parties, ran for president in 2020.

”We now don’t just have one image of a person who happens to be a woman who ran for president—namely me,” she told the AP in September. “Now we have a much better opportunity for women candidates, starting with Kamala, to be viewed in a way that just takes for granted the fact that, yes, guess what? She’s a woman.”

Trump voter Elizabeth Herbert, a retired homeschool teacher from Wake Forest, North Carolina, saw Trump as a strong leader and family man. She would still like to see a woman president. She just didn’t embrace Harris.

“I think a woman could do a great job as president,” she said. “I don’t think she is the right woman.”

Some women who’d voted for Harris told AP they were too stunned to speak about the news. “I’m devastated,” texted one; “I’ll need a little time,” another wrote. Others said they were forcing themselves to move forward.

“We’ll get through today and then get some rest,” Martin said, looking forward to playing trivia with her friends later.

“The world is going to change, but we have to find our way in it. We can’t let this ruin us.”

AP

Kolkata: Sold by her family as a teenager, Zarin was beaten, drugged and repeatedly gang-raped—just one of many thousands of young women trafficked in India. Her home state of West Bengal—bordering Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal—is a key trafficking hub where more than 50,000 girls are missing, the highest figure in India, according to the latest national crime records.

Zarin, whose name has been changed, was sold to traffickers by her family after refusing an arranged marriage at the age of 16. “I said ‘no’, and told them I was too young,” Zarin, now 20, told AFP.

On a trip she thought was to visit her sister in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, some 1,900 kilometers away, she was instead handed over to a man. Her captors frequently drugged her to knock her out, and it was only when she hid her drug-laced meal that she realized she was being sexually abused.

“I lay there, pretending to be unconscious... then I saw three or four men entering the room,” she said. “That is when I understood what had been happening to me.” She fought back that time, but was gang-raped in the days to come.

India’s interior ministry registered 2,250 cases of human trafficking in 2022, according to the most recent data, but the real figure is believed to be much higher. Many of the missing girls are trafficked through Kolkata, state capital of West Bengal and one of India’s biggest cities—some into forced labor, others into prostitution.

Zarin’s captors later sold her on—she believes for less than $3,500. “They would beat me up, sexually abuse me,” she said, her voice breaking in emotion. “Speaking about this is painful.” She later escaped, and is trying to rebuild her life.

‘Traffickers exploit millions’

In the world’s most populous nation, the scale of the problem is vast.

A 2023 US State Department report on trafficking said that India is making ‘significant efforts’ but that they still fall below minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. “Traffickers exploit millions of people in commercial sex within India,” the report read, saying some gangs arrange “sham marriages within India and Gulf states” before forcing women into the sex trade. Social media, as well as mobile dating sites, are used to lure victims, it added.

Many are trapped by the long-outlawed practice of bonded labor, dubbed ‘debt slavery’ by rights campaigners, in which victims are forced to work to pay back borrowed cash while interest keeps mounting. It said “significant numbers” of Nepali and Bangladeshi women and girls are also lured to India for sex trafficking with the false promise of a job.

Pallabi Ghosh, founder of Impact and Dialogue Foundation, which works on rehabilitating trafficked survivors, said the numbers reported were far lower than reality due to ‘stigma’.

Families often don’t want to pursue the case once a missing girl is rescued. “Trafficking cases are tough to lodge,” she said. “That is the reason why traffickers are out there at large.”

The problem is acute, said Pinaki Sinha, from Kolkata-based anti-trafficking charity Sanlaap. Poverty is a key cause, said Sinha, saying some parents wanted their daughter to marry into an “economically better off family”.

Instead, the girls were abused. “There is a lack of awareness—and a lack of adequate support,” he said.

‘Tore my clothes’

Ayesha, 18, swapped a life working in a garment factory in neighboring Bangladesh, handing her and her mother’s savings of $285 to a broker who promised to smuggle her into India for better paid factory work. But after arriving in India, she was told the work at the factory was no longer available but that she could instead dance in a bar. Refusing that, and without income or shelter, she stayed with a man who offered her a room—only to attack her.

“I was begging him and crying,” Ayesha said, also not her real name. “He abused and hit me, tore my clothes and assaulted me.” She was then repeatedly sexually abused by two men. “They raped me more than eight or nine times over 18 days,” she said.

Ayesha managed to escape after contacting a neighbor. “I told the police that I want the two men to be punished for raping me,” she said. But officers told her it was her “mistake” for coming illegally to India and dismissed the case. Ayesha has not lost hope, planning to return home and become a beautician. “I want to be self-sufficient,” she said. “I want to forget all about it.”

AFP

As the 29th United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP29) approaches in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nepal’s delegation under President Ram Chandra Paudel is set to represent the nation’s climate challenges. Nepal, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, faces rising threats from floods, landslides and unpredictable weather patterns. Yet, while Nepal’s participation aims to spotlight these urgent issues, the participation fails to reflect the voices of those most affected. Like always, this year’s COP preparation also exposes the troubling disconnect between official representation and grassroots needs.

Rather than including those directly affected by climate change—the farmers, local leaders and activists who confront these impacts daily—Nepal’s delegation comprises primarily political insiders and elites from NGOs and INGOs. Despite claiming to advocate for the vulnerable, these organizations have not extended a real invitation to those at the frontlines of climate change. Pre-COP meetings are being held in star hotels with closed doors to grassroots representatives, the very people whose insights and lived experiences could bring authenticity and urgency to the global stage. Instead, the delegation’s composition reflects political favoritism, not the inclusivity that should define climate advocacy.

The exclusion of affected communities, civil society and media professionals specializing in climate reporting raises serious concerns. Nepal’s most vulnerable regions are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Yet their voices remain unheard. UN agencies, NGOs and INGOs have largely ignored calls for transparency in the selection process, leaving the delegation stacked with privileged individuals who may lack genuine engagement with climate challenges on the ground.

For Nepal’s participation at COP29 to be meaningful, it must represent more than political interests. The experiences and insights of those facing climate-induced hardships must drive Nepal’s agenda, pushing for adaptive solutions rooted in the realities of vulnerable communities. Without grassroots representation, Nepal risks losing credibility on the international stage and, more critically, missing a vital opportunity to advocate for true climate justice. It is time for a change, ensuring that those directly affected by climate change have a seat at the table.