Dear brothers and sisters, Let us start talking about conflict, climate, civil society and ecosystem of nature and how these are related to change, and as humans living collectively on this planet what should we do in this regard: 

Many in this world, specifically in the Middle East, where sectarianism ignited by Iran is sweeping and destabilizing countries and societies and where people are living harsh living conditions, lacking in basic requirements of life and the rule of law and are plagued with wars in some countries, believe that climate challenges, global warming, environment and the damage to natural ecosystem should not be addressed at the expense of their daily struggles. Some may consider such issues among the main concerns of the developed world, whose countries and societies have succeeded in developing solutions to their basic problems, such as building a state of law and citizenship, and consolidating democratic systems that enable their people to choose their rulers, hold them accountable, and change them based on the criteria of their commitment to the public interest of society and to their priorities and aspirations.

Actually, we should perceive the facts as they are. Iran are ruled by a dynastic sectarian regime imposes a totalitarian grip. So the last thing on anyone's mind would be for such a regime to pay attention to the climate and environmental and economic stability. The Gulf states, on the other hand, are basically classified as consumer countries whose economic stability is based on the oil boom, and therefore it is not in their dictionary to create a balanced development that takes into account the surrounding environment and the climate. 

However, I see that any ignoring the connection of economy and growth with the climate and the environment is a shortsighted and emotional perspective, no matter if shown by social groups under tyranny, poverty and oppression, or by consumerist or ideological governments, as is the case in the Gulf and Iran.

Climate problems, global warming and the damage to the natural ecosystem due to industry, economy and ways of life followed by humans of the modern era are issues of paramount importance.

The care about climate and nature represents a criterion serving as a distinction between two ways of thinking and two approaches to life: one runs automatically, is based on ideologies and does not care about the environment and climate, and is also based on contradictions with nature and the ecosystem without any consideration. The another is a dynamic approach that aims to harmonize with, integrate and preserve the natural ecosystem, rather than to destroy it.

Networks have been formed across the world, including civil organizations, human rights networks, environmental defenders, hundreds of civil organizations, and political currents. All of them adopt visions calling for stopping the destruction of the natural ecosystem and for reformulation of our lives in a way that is in harmony with the natural ecosystem instead of being an enemy and war against it.

Our today’s struggle for protecting the environment and considering the urgent problems related to the ecosystem and the frightening increases in the rates of global warming and other environmental and ecological problems does not contradict our struggles of societies for justice and providing opportunities for a decent life to all and for vital political systems that guarantee the rule of law and grass-roots involvement in decision-making and for empowering different communities to oversee their rulers and impose their priorities on successive political administrations.

It is a single orientation on which transnational and intercontinental alliances will be built, an orientation that includes shared visions about the climate, the ecosystem and our perspectives to reshape our lives in integration with the environment surrounding us, rather than to be against or destroy it, an orientation extends from the struggle for human rights, democracy and women's rights to a position that gives greater importance to the integration between human systems and the natural ecosystem.

Environmental and economic stability should be compatible with the ecological perspective of nature and climate. Since its first emergence, life has been based on this integration between the lives of humans, trees, animals and plants. Our struggle today is heading towards its integrative goals in a way that brings us step by step closer to this lost harmony, far away from our current lifestyle. 

Imposing an ecological perspective based on the need for integration between our human activities and nature has become a necessity that today's world cannot neglect if it wants to survive and be sustainable. Human societies in today's world need more than ever to design our life forms of business, economy, international relations, trade and industry in a way that ensures integration with nature and limits interference and damage to nature's inherent capabilities to sustain life and ensure its sustainability.

This desired integration is taking shape in today's world, as a necessity of life, not a redundant luxury. We look forward to laying down new rules for international relations and regulating global trade and economy in a new systematic way that prevents any trade wars, protects the interests of poor countries, preserves nature, and prevents and criminalizes harm to it.

 

Dear brothers and sisters,  

What our countries experienced ten years ago has determined issues and priorities of our societies. We have learned from the Arab Spring revolutions that we must build global, transcontinental alliances among global civil society, whether in the western countries or throughout the world. We revolted in 2011 against the local dictatorships in our countries to be surprised that the dictatorial regimes in the region and the world order behind them are standing side by side in standing up to us.

They waged a fierce war against our peaceful revolutions, and interests pushed the major democracies to stand by the theocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran against our peaceful revolutions by various means and under various names. One struggle, one world. Without realizing this fact, we will remain scattered islands in front of a global ogre fueled by oil barrels and gas pipelines, with the support of relevant companies and political administrations and backward regimes. 

Before 2011, elections and democracy had turned into empty words. The media was infiltrated, political parties were hatched and contained, and parallel human rights organizations were formed that work under the title of civil but in a manner that serves tyranny and its policies aimed to contain pro forma democracy and keep controlling power and using it to impede the building of the national state, the state of law and justice. These titles were emptied of their contents and thus the tyrannical regimes and their societies have reached a dead end.

The revolutions were a natural consequence of failed flexible and gradual transition to democracy. The emerging democracies remained merely decorative without any development or accumulation, and were used as a cover for a disguised tyranny that worked to bequeath republics to sons and had never achieved development nor established modern education or economical infrastructure. 

These regimes have failed, have not succeeded in development, have not moved to democracy, and have bequeathed power in the republics to sons. The revolutions broke out late and should have taken place at the end of the eighties. What we reap today is a result of silence on tyranny that, and not the Arab Spring, was responsible for destruction and collapses inside our societies and countries. 

We meet today to re-foresee the future in light of the world’s regression from democracy and a setback in global trends that support the modern value system that prevailed in international trends since the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War at the end of 1990s.

Our meeting today to talk about the effects of climate, civil society, change and women’s participation takes place at a time when chauvinistic movements are coming back to the fore, like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Houthi militias in Yemen. Both movements have come back from the dark ages to have a place in the online era of the twenty-first century.

Unfortunately, our world today does not hesitate to recognize extremist militias that see in women a shame, seek to dominate others, criminalize art, antagonize freedoms and crack down on rights. On the other hand, this same world, along with its global order and major powers, has taken a hostile position to the Arab Spring and to the aspirations of peoples who have revolted for freedom, dignity, human rights and democracy

Today's world, which sees the Taliban as a fait accompli, had dealt with our peaceful civilized revolutions as an unforgivable crime! Today’s world, which is ready to negotiate with a theocratic terrorist state like Iran and turn a blind eye to its sectarian affiliated militias that have destroyed Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, yesterday looked at the democratic transformations heralded by the Arab Spring as a great threat.

The world has abandoned us and allowed the region’s anti-democratic axes, Iran and Saudi Arabia, declare a vengeful war on our societies for nothing but because we wanted to live just like the rest of the world. We revolted peacefully for the sake of dignity, the rule of law, civil society, equality and human rights. Let us say that our world is dominated by a global order that is in crisis and is no longer viable, which means it is time to change it.

My reference to the global order here is due to the apparent increasing denial of the values of democracy and human rights. How does the world and its major powers look today at a regime like the Assad regime in Syria? How come that the civilized western democratic world accepts the reintegration of such a criminal sectarian regime that has killed a million Syrians, displaced five million and brought Iran and its militias, together with Russia, to home to help him killing his own people?

By the way, is there any difference between Milosevic and Bashar al-Assad, or between those responsible for genocides and our region’s regimes that are much more cruel and criminal?! What remains today of the slogans of western democracies, especially in Europe and America, after long decades of raising democracy, freedom and human rights as titles of their policies??

Our world has become less free and democratic, and civil society is constantly shrinking. Not only that, women’s achievements during the past thirty years become at stake, especially due to raging counter-revolutions hostile to the Arab Spring. Civil society, women's leadership and participation, equality and democracy were an essential part of the change agenda in Arab countries, but they have been let down and met with local and regional wars.

A renewed focus on civil society and women's participation today takes on new meanings, which leads to restoring the image of the Arab revolutions of change instead of the dead margins of pre-2011, when the regimes contained international efforts directed to civil society and turned them into make-up to cover their tyranny. Should we accept the issues of civil society and women's rights to be used as decoration for the faces of regimes that have broken records in their wars against the Arab Spring revolutionaries!!?

Will the world remain silent about undermining the peaceful revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen, thus returning to the same mechanisms of pre-Arab Spring years? In those years, the talk about civil society and women's participation was a routine function of international and local organizations that used to hold seminars in hotels and ended up taking pictures.

Those activities remained isolated within limited scope and did not expand to wider groups of our societies yearning for change, democracy and the modern state gains related to respect of rights, freedoms and gender equality. The Arab Spring revolutions at the beginning of the last decade took place as a result of the people's dream of civil society, human rights, the rule of law and gender equality.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that every tittle presented today globally regarding these issues brings us back to the Arab Spring. Any attempt to ignore the fact of the Arab Spring is nothing but normalization with hands stained with the blood of young men and women who were symbols of aspirations towards civil society, equality and human rights.

We will lose our self-confidence and faith in our cause if we keep insisting on hollowing out the concepts of civil society and women’s participation and accepting to transform them into a mere festive ritual in hotel halls isolated from the revolutions and social movement in our societies and from the subsequent conflicts, wars and confrontations led by the forces of tyranny, their affiliated militias and the regional axes hostile to freedom and democracy.

Our today’s world is going through unparalleled transformation. All these imbalances, wars, the resurgence of racism and the loss of meaning are only signs of the end of the old world and its decay. The old world is collapsing while there is no clear and unambiguous evidence yet of a new one world. Nevertheless, our will and strong belief in the life we deserve will be enough to shape this world that will only be as we aspire to. The stronger our belief in rights, humanity, humanity, dignity and freedom is firmly rooted in ourselves, the closer we will come to the life we want and the world we look forward to and hope for.

 

Dear brothers and sisters, 

I have a wide range of headlines I can speak about, but let me talk about my country, Yemen, as an example of human tragedy. There, you can see Iranian-backed terrorist sectarian militias that practice brutality, and you can also see a pattern of oil-rich monarchies that have exploited a poor country and tried to occupy its important islands, coasts and wealth.

In Yemen, a militia called the Houthi group led a coup and imposed a medieval slavery regime, that is worse than the Taliban model, on more than half of its population. In Yemen, Iran supports a terrorist sectarian militia that claims its divine right to power and enslaves twenty million Yemenis and prevents them from salaries and basic services, such as water, electricity and oil products. This unruly militia has demolished homes, killed its opponents, arrested thousands and throw them in prisons on suspicion of rejecting its policies.

Yemen also suffers from a Saudi-Emirati-led coalition that commits its crimes and seizes our islands, coasts and wealth under the pretext of restoring Yemeni legitimacy, believing that it is able to buy the world's silence towards its occupation and make international organizations be silent about its crimes forever.

 

Dear friends, 

Perhaps I seem completely immersed in the tragedy of my country, and a captive to the suffering of my people, so please forgive me! Yemen is a typical case for the entire Middle East; a distinctive Arab case among those that have witnessed mass massacres and horrific human rights violations in the last ten years since the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011.

The war and sectarian militia have created a fertile environment for the exacerbation of humanitarian and health crises and widespread human rights violations; an environment that lacks any guarantees or protection for millions of people who have found themselves living without a state and without any support to help them face the collapse of the health system and confront militias that kill and abuse them and use their daily needs to humiliate and blackmail them.

Women in Yemen are subjected to illegal arrests and abuses, in an atmosphere of incitement and contempt that recalls the crimes of Middle Ages while we are in the twenty-first century. Thirty million Yemenis suffer from war, the absence of the state, the interruption of salaries, hunger, poverty, and a series of consequences that render the humanitarian situation there tragic in a manner unparalleled in the contemporary world.

In the full sense of the expression, Yemen is experiencing the most tragic humanitarian crisis in the world today. Yemenis do not need alms, as far as they need a serious stance from the world and the international community to help them restore their state and their country’s security and stability. Despite its importance, aid is neither an end in itself and nor a solution to the suffering of Yemenis. This is in addition to the fact that aid is mainly controlled by the de facto authorities in war zones, which makes it impossible to reach the needy without going through the barriers of political use of aid to subjugate and control local communities and ensure their loyalty to armed groups.

Yemenis need to get rid of the coups in Sana’a and Aden, to be free of foreign guardianship, to achieve a political settlement to restore their state, republic and the country’s security and stability. We will never tire of raising our voices and struggling for the salvation of our country and people from this tragedy and this world’s inhumanity unless we see justice manifested here in this forgotten region left alone with the merchants of death, weapons, wars and destruction, in the light of merciless international interests that pay attention neither to moral standards nor to human beings’ humanity.

Although they are part of this world, thirty million Yemenis live without a state, without salaries and without services, at the mercy of militias. This painful truth never leaves my mind and disturbs me wherever I go and travel, like a burning ember in my heart. Yemen I come from and belong to needs your voice, the voice of everyone on the planet to stop the war and end the guardianship of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Iran's support for the Houthi coup.

 

Dear brothers and sisters, 

The Arabs did not commit a crime when they ignited the Arab Spring in search of equality and a decent life. The Arab Spring was nothing but an expression of our belonging to the era and our belief in the values of justice, equality and freedom. The Arab Spring was really like a test for the international community and democratic countries.

Our Arab Spring came to confirm double standards of the global order and major powers. We have learned from the Arab Spring lessons that the global order sees democratic transformation in the Arab region as a threat to its interests and to its allies of dictatorships and corrupt monarchies.

The United Nations has failed to help Yemen stop the war and restore its state. It did nothing to stop atrocities against Yemenis. The international community did not care about UN-Security Council resolutions and international legitimacy, just because the major countries have preferred to close their eyes to the Shiite sectarian groups backed by Iran, to watch the Arabs, including Yemen, engulfed in sectarian conflicts, to sell its positions to the oil countries "Saudi Arabia and the UAE" and turn blind eye to their crimes in Yemen, foremost of which is their contribution to supporting the Houthi coup against the State and handing it over to the Iranian-backed Houthi militia.

Yemen has been let down, partly due to the failure and inability of the international community to activate its collective mechanisms to stop internal conflicts and bloody wars that have claimed countless lives in Yemen, Syria, Libya and other conflict-inflamed areas around the world. Although it is part of this world, Yemen is experiencing the tragedies arising from the fascist war and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, alone and defenseless from any real support.

Our people have been suffering an all-out war of revenge for seven years, , a fierce war that represents a new pattern of undermining the life foundations of the entire population. The state collapsed, and sectarian Houthi militias overran the capital and cities. In light of the non-payment of salaries and the collapse of the health and service system, the Houthi militias have taken control of international aid. 

For their part, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have bombed our cities and infrastructure, established militias loyal to them in the city of Aden, prevented the legitimate government from operating from within the country and taken control of key ports, oil-gas facilities and strategic islands like Socotra and Perim. We call upon the world to respect the right of our people to life and put an end to a fascist war whose main parties are Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their affiliated militias. 

 

Finally,

I should remind over and over and over again of the tragedy of Yemen, a tragedy of a people facing a war that affects every aspect of its lives. Not an hour passes without Yemenis suffering from all forms and colors of the war. I have found in your event’s agenda words related to change, conflict, civil society and human rights. However, I did not find in my mind to talk about it better than the struggle of my people in the face of war and its horrors and to convey through you to the whole world the voice of thirty million Yemenis. 

Glory to the human struggle for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, citizenship and the rule of law!