Today, Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Tawakkol Karman participated in the Hay Festival Querétaro in Mexico, a cultural event seen as one of the most important literary events in the Spanish-speaking world.

During the conference, Tawakkol Karman delivered a speech and emphasized the urgent need to revive the role of culture, literature, arts and art festivals and to learn about their creative energies as a way to face what societies and nations are experiencing in times of armed conflicts and tragedies.

The roles of artists, writers, thinkers and musicians serve as a vital civilian and humanitarian weapon in wartime and beyond, she indicated.

Karman also pointed out that the culture of exclusion, monopoly and death does recognize art only insofar as it is used as a means for mobilization and death.

The use of arts as means of war and death is not something new, she stressed, explaining that she does not talk about those arts that reconstruct what wars destroyed in people's souls, bonds and human integration, but rather about the ones created by fighting groups. 

---

To reed full texts click here