Azerbaijani chess grandmaster Teimour Radjabov qualified for the Candidates Tournament 2020 after winning the Chess World Cup 2019. He was expected to compete with Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, Wang Hao, Alexander Grischuk, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri and Kirill Alekseenko in a double round-robin tournament from 17 March to 4 April 2020 in Yekaterinburg, Russia in order to determine the challenger for world champion Magnus Carlsen in the World Chess Championship 2020.

The spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 raised concerns regarding the tournament. Radjabov had asked FIDE for postponement but his request was rejected and he was given a deadline to confirm his participation by 6 March 2020. Finally, he formally announced his withdrawal from the tournament and was replaced by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as a player with the next highest average rating according to the regulations.

The first half of the tournament had been played from 17 March to 25 March before FIDE's official announcement that the second half will be suspended due to Russian government's air traffic interruption, effective since 27 March 2020, as a result of the growing concerns around the coronavirus pandemic. It was announced that the results from rounds one to seven will be retained and the tournament will continue from round eight after the pandemic, which means that Radjabov will remain out of the tournament even though it was postponed for the concerns raised beforehand.

This petition aims to raise support among the global chess community for reconsideration of FIDE's decision and restart of the Candidates Tournament 2020 with Teimour Radjabov as one of the participants. Furthermore, it does not request Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to be removed from competition, so one of the options to consider in this global state of emergency is tournament's enlargement.