Around fifty Indigenous representatives staged a demonstration in Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia) on 20 August 2026, during the COP17 summit of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, protesting a US refusal to negotiate key agenda items. Washington is blocking three negotiating points: Indigenous and local community participation, gender issues, and coordination with other COP processes in which the US does not take part. Activists, including Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of the Association of Indigenous Peul Women of Chad, warned that the blockade could devastate communities already struggling with advancing desertification, while a private meeting between protesters and the US delegation ended without any breakthrough.