Open Letter to Delegations at the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Santa Marta, Colombia, 28–29 April 2026

We, the undersigned organisations, legal experts, academics and human rights practitioners, write in support of the initiative by the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine (GEEP) calling for mandatory end-use certification for all fossil fuel exports as a binding global standard.

The Santa Marta Conference arrives at a decisive moment. Convened in direct response to the failure of COP30 negotiations to address the phase-out of fossil fuels, it represents the first serious multilateral attempt to confront the fossil fuel system at its source. We welcome this ambition. But we write to insist that the conference must engage with a dimension of fossil fuel trade that the transition debate has thus far largely refused to name: the direct and documented role of fossil fuels in sustaining military operations, illegal occupation, and genocide.

Fossil fuels are not only a climate crisis. They are a weapons system. Over 21 million tonnes of crude oil and refined fuels were delivered to Israel between November 2023 and October 2025, including military-grade jet fuel used to power the F-35 fighter jets and drones conducting strikes on Gaza. The International Court of Justice has found that Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal under jus cogens norms of international law, and has imposed binding obligations on all third states not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. The Genocide Convention’s obligation to employ all means reasonably available to prevent genocide remains unmet, as fuel shipments continue.

These are not fringe legal arguments. They are the considered findings of the world’s highest court, and they implicate the same supply chains, the same corporations and the same state actors whose behaviour the Santa Marta Conference exists to address.

The current framework governing fossil fuel trade, the WTO, the Energy Charter Treaty, bilateral investment agreements, was built to protect market access and investor returns. It treats a tanker delivering crude oil to a military refinery identically to one supplying civilian heating fuel. It gives corporations the legal standing to sue governments that attempt to restrict those flows. It has no mechanism to require exporters to verify or disclose what their product is used for. This architecture does not merely fail to prevent harm, it was designed to prevent the accountability that would require harm to be addressed.

Workers and trade unions in port communities, refineries and maritime sectors have already refused to handle fuel shipments sustaining genocide. Their actions are not only morally justified, they are legally grounded in the same obligations this conference is being asked to affirm. Any framework emerging from Santa Marta must protect workers who refuse complicity, not expose them to legal or economic retaliation. The courage of these workers has made visible what states and corporations have worked to conceal: that fossil fuel supply chains are supply chains of war, and that those who move, load and transport these fuels are not neutral actors in systems of violence.

We call on delegations at Santa Marta to recognise that a just transition from fossil fuels cannot be achieved, legally or politically, while this architecture remains intact, and while fossil fuel trade continues to finance occupation, apartheid and genocide. Specifically, we urge the conference to:

1. Affirm that the regulation of fossil fuel exports is a matter of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, not merely climate policy, and that the obligations established by the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 2024, the Genocide Convention and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights apply directly to fossil fuel supply chains.

2. Call for the inclusion of mandatory end-use certification requirements for fossil fuel exports in any multilateral fossil fuel treaty framework, drawing on the model already established for dual-use goods under the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Arms Trade Treaty.

3. Demand the coordinated withdrawal of all remaining states from the Energy Charter Treaty and the elimination of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade agreements that protect fossil fuel flows from regulatory accountability.

4. Explicitly acknowledge the genocide against the Palestinian people as a case study in the human rights consequences of unregulated fossil fuel trade,  and affirm that an immediate energy embargo on Israel is required under existing international law obligations, independently of and prior to any new regulatory framework.

5. Establish legal protections for workers and trade unions who refuse to handle, load or transport fossil fuels destined for military end-use or conflict zones where international crimes are being committed, ensuring that the exercise of this right does not expose workers to dismissal, criminal prosecution or civil liability, and that it is recognised as conduct consistent with states’ own obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.

Santa Marta is being held in a port city whose coal terminal has supplied fuel to conflict zones. The conference’s host country, Colombia, has itself imposed an energy embargo on Israel. This is the political ground on which a truly just transition must be built: one that connects the phase-out of fossil fuels to the dismantling of the systems of violence those fuels sustain.

A transition that phases out fossil fuels for climate reasons while leaving intact the mechanisms that allow those fuels to power genocide is not a just transition. It is an incomplete one. The legal framework to demand more already exists. The political will to use it must be built here.

*Full legal briefing available here