SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — The Latest on COP27, this year’s annual UN summit on climate change.

GENEVA — The head of the U.N. human rights office is calling for the immediate release of a prominent jailed activist who is leading a hunger and water strike in Egypt amid concerns about his health.

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, “is in great danger. His dry hunger strike puts his life at acute risk.”

Rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani relayed Türk’s comments at a U.N. briefing on Tuesday and said that all activists and others affected by climate change should “have a seat at the table” at the U.N. climate conference that opened a day earlier in the Egyptian seaside resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“We are very concerned for his health,” Shamdasani said, insisting on the need for Abdel-Fattah “to be urgently, immediately released.”

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The U.N. rights office last raised its concerns about his health with Egyptian authorities on Friday, she said.

The rights office said Abdel-Fattah was repeatedly arrested over more than a decade for his activism against alleged human rights violations by Egyptian security forces and the use of military courts to try civilians.