 Yeah, community matters. Amnesty International Cup 26, we are so happy that we caught up with Agnes Calamard. And she is the secretary general of Amnesty International. Let me say that again, she's the secretary general of Amnesty International and she's in Glasgow and catching up with her is really special. Thank you very much Agnes for appearing on our show. Thank you, thank you Jay for welcoming me. So Amnesty was created in 1961, which was a very, what do I say, kind of an activist time. And it was created to deal with global issues on human rights and atrocities. And it doesn't take government money. I really liked that part. And it has a following now of 10 million people who support it and it operates all over the world. And we're here together. So I'm really happy to meet you. So can you tell us more about Amnesty International? So we're gonna handle on what you do and what it does. Well, I think you've already presented its history. So it's a 60 year old human rights organization, probably the unique human rights global organization because it has members all over the world. It started working mostly on prisoners of conscience on political prisoners focusing on imprisonment, but has progressively increased the scope of its focus, you know, included the death penalty as a very important thing that was done in the 70s. Until now where, you know, we are really covering a very large number of violations, including those related to climate change. Civic and political rights remain at the heart of our work, I will say, but we do have a substantive amount of work focusing on economic and social issues, including those related to climate change. And we try as much as possible to demonstrate the interdependence between those rights. So while protest, for instance, and associations are very important or expression, are very important rights, which are probably part of the most, you know, frequent issues that we cover. We will demonstrate that those rights are violated in the context, for instance, of people protesting working conditions or of people associating for trade union purposes. So really making an integrated story. It's not about civic rights and economic rights. It's about really demonstrating the interdependence of everything we do. That's so important. Totally, I totally agree. It's all connected. And I guess to ask you why you are at climate change a conference, why are you COP26? You've already sort of answered that. But can you tell me why you're there? The way you see it and what you're doing there? And then I'm gonna ask you what you're finding there. So first we're here because the climate crisis is a human rights crisis. I think, you know, everyone knows by now, unless you really are completely rejecting scientific evidence that the climate crisis is here, that it's largely, if not mostly or only related to human intervention, to human actions. We know that the climate crisis is resulting into, you know, disasters around the world from mega fires to drought to flooding. We know that the climate crisis is increasingly the source of international warfare. People fighting one another because they are losing access to their livelihood. They are losing access to their way of life. They have no other opportunities to pick up, but to pick up arms. So conflict and climate are very closely related. They have always a little bit been, but it's certainly now becoming a major characteristic of the world we live in. We know that people working on climate, working on environmental issues are among the most vulnerable to arbitrary arrest, to disappearance and to killings. The largest number of human rights defenders killed or imprisoned every year are those working on environmental issues and on climate change issues. So we know that behind climate change, there is right to life because people are dying because of climate change. There is right to health. There is right to a healthy environment. So many human rights are embodied in the climate issue and the climate issue is about many human rights. So we need to really tell the story of climate which is also a story about rights, rights being violated and rights that must be appellant. And the COP26 is the moment where in theory, the international community should come together and say, right, we're facing the most incredibly challenging existentialist threat of human history. That is a global issue. It's a common issue. It's not a problem that is only being confronted by some people, even though some people are bearing the brunt of it much more than others at the moment, but it is a global issues. It is potentially life threatening for our planet and for human beings. We need to come together. We need to find solution to it. That's what COP is all about. It's about the international community coming together, looking for solution to a predictable forecasted global disaster. It may be increasing. It's not happening all at once, but we know it's happening. We know it will happen and we know that no one can escape from it. We've had this, we have confronted very dramatic situations before as an international community. In fact, the multilateral system was born out of World War II. It was born out of the Holocaust. It was born out of 60 million dead and second World War. So we do have a history of coming together and saying, what are we going to do to avoid what happened and to create a future that will be devoid of a global war? And to do so, there is only one solution, Jay, and that solution is to put people at the center. People, people, people. And I'm saying that because right now here at COP, we do not have people at the center. What we have are a range of issues, including profit, including national interest, including market, including the industry that is largely behind the climate crisis. We do not have people, people, people. And that's why the search for solution is so difficult and is escaping us right now. So what are you doing to change that, Agnes? Amnesty International is an organization that communicates in every way possible directly and through its supporters, followers, members. Amnesty International has protest, has supported protest on critical issues over these, what, 70 years? I get that right, 60 years. Amnesty International has advocated in legislatures, governments and with the people, as you say, but what can you do in a COP26 that is focused on industry, on government, on profit makers rather than on people? Yeah. Well, we're there to remind everyone that the people matters, people count and people will help them to account. There are 40,000 people at COP26, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0. Most of them are people coming from civil society, coming from indigenous organization, coming from communities on the front line of the climate crisis. So people are at the meeting and they are trying to make their voice heard. They are facing difficulties because access to the conference has been limited. We cannot access the negotiation, most of us cannot. There are even many groups that cannot access even the main location of the meeting itself. So people have not been really present, even physically within the negotiation but we have been all around it. And many of us are still quite close to the negotiation but that's not good enough. How do you feel about that? Well, I mean, civil society for the last, since the beginning of the week last week have been voicing very clearly, very strongly their concern about that situations and have asked for better access. Some progress has been made, not enough. I think it's got to be a lesson for the next COP. We cannot tolerate the situation where civil society organization cannot be present at the negotiation and contribute to the negotiation. Now, I understand you can't have 40,000 people in one meeting room, so there are some logistical issues but there were ways of accommodating certainly the coalition that represent thousands of people. So Amnesty is there in a very unborn way, I will say, because there have been many other organizations that have been working on that issue for much longer than us. We are here at COP to support those organizations. We are here to support youth groups. In fact, Amnesty came with supporting a number of youth activists. We are here to support indigenous communities and we are part of coalitions and the coalitions around climate change are very important, they are the means through which our collective voice is brought together. Otherwise, we will be far too dispersed. So I just want to highlight that because it's important for people to understand that, yes, there are a lot of us, but we are very organized. We are organized in coalition, we are organized in constituency and we are working together day and night to find common position, to find common ways of articulating our global demands. To a large extent, many of us have found agreements around many of the positions and that's good because we do need to articulate a united front, to present a united front on some of those very difficult issue that we are confronting with at the moment. Where does Greta Thunberg fit in all of this? Is the group that surrounds her within your group, they have the same views or are they different? Where do they fit in COP26? Yeah, they are part of the youth activists, they're very present everywhere you go in every coalitions, every constituency as strong representative from youth organizations. Yes, today evening, in fact, I had a meeting with a number of them from the Philippines, from Canada, from Russia. So the youth is extremely central to the way the civil society coalitions are organized. They are at the heart of the vision that we want to communicate. They are the messengers of many of the messengers we want to send out to the world. So whether it's Greta or another young person, they are very much present and very much there and it's not just Greta. And I mean that with all due respect, I think she's wonderful, she's very strong, very articulate, and she has put forward a view that is very much a reflection of where generation stands on many issues. So she has all of my respect for having done so at a very young age, but there are many others like her currently in Glasgow. So Agnes, you spoke of articulating your demands your demands, the demands of amnesty and the people who read with amnesty and the people who you've been talking with at COP26. And you, let me add that from the newspapers, it seems that the powers that be, that are on the inside track of COP26 are trying to fashion an agreement, okay? Like the Paris Accord kind of agreement, maybe more advanced. And it hasn't happened yet, but that's the effort. So if I ask you this, if you were in the inside, if you were in that negotiation, if you were in with the insiders discussing what is going to be in this agreement, what demands would you include? What provisions would you insist on? Absolutely, well, look, I'll say three or four key issues. The first one is around the demand around the maximum or the minimum or the temperature increase that the world should tolerate moving forward. Right now, according to the latest report in fact published today, it appears as if the pledges made by government will lead the world to something around 2.4, 2.7, temperature increase as compared to the pre-industrial stage. Maybe it doesn't sound like a lot. In human terms, it is a hell of a lot. And it will translate into millions of people losing their life and millions more losing access to their lands. So that temperature increase is simply a death toll, a death toll for many people right now. What we need according to the scientific evidence is 1.5 degrees maximum. And we're very far from that. Why? Because countries are not pledging and are not acting enough on the pledges that they have made. So the pledges are not sufficient and the actions are even less sufficient than the pledges. So we are way off mark when it comes to that very basic demands. So that's the point number one, we need to see more pledges and we need to see actions with those pledges. The second related issue is that the international community, instead of determining that they really need to move to zero carbon emission, is actually tip-toeing around it. It's like procrastinating. And their way to procrastinate is to come up with all kinds of mechanisms, allowing them basically to sell their carbon emissions to others, to buy the lack of carbon emissions from others and for some to actually profit from this weird carbon emission business. And that has led me to suggest and to point out that it is a sign of our time that when confronted with the most dramatic crisis ever that the world has seen for centuries, our response is to come up with a money-making mechanism, even that's a sign of our time. Instead, we need pledges. We need government to say, by 2050, if not earlier, I will have zero carbon emission. What it also means is that governments must take actions towards putting an end to the fuel industry None of that really is being done except by a few minority governments right now within the Western world. So that's a big problem. Third issue is financing. Why is it important? The climate crisis came about through human work, human intervention, human industrialization. That has been mostly done driven by Western countries and a few others such as India or China and China very much so. So those countries are largely responsible for the climate crisis through their carbon emission over centuries. The people on the frontline of the climate crisis have actually done very little to contribute to it. They are indigenous people. They are people living on low-level islands. It is only fair, therefore, that those responsible for the climate crisis should pay for it. And that's where climate financing play a role. That financing should have two functions. It should mitigate the effect of the climate crisis and it should create the means through which people can adapt through the climate crisis. A lot of money is required, at least 100 billions per year. At the moment, we are very far from that objective. The hope is that by the end of this week, governments may have managed to make a commitment to 100 billions by the end of 2023 and possibly by the end of 2022. They are also suggesting the most positive readers of what's happening that we should be able then to increase the contribution so that we have more than 100,000 billion per year after 2023. That is what is being hoped for. It's a very important element of it because the countries from the global south cannot pay for climate mitigation and climate adaptation. They do need the support from the global north and it's not a support. It's actually a form of reparation for the harm that has been done. So in addition to adaptation and to mitigation, we need to look at a way of repairing for the damages that have been caused to the environment. That's a third dimension of climate financing and the most complex one at the moment. I'm really trying to summarize something that is very technical, very complex and I will not be the best person to elaborate on how complex the financial mechanisms are. But we are advocating for this 100 billion per year and more because more is required. We are advocating for the global north to be able to cover the cost of mitigation, adaptation, but also the cost of the harm done to the environment and to the climate. So as you can well imagine, nothing is easy here. It's all about money plus, as you probably have heard on the radio or on the news, we are confronting very well resourced lobbyists. So for instance, the fossil fuel industry, which is largely responsible for the climate crisis at COP26 at the highest, the biggest delegation of all, followed by a few countries that are also the biggest climate crisis producers, Brazil, Saudi Arabia. China is not there, but I understand that they make their presence feel very much in the negotiation and they are not very constructive in the negotiation right now, even though they are among the biggest producer of carbon. In all those negotiations, human rights are central. Like I said, it's not about money making, it's not about profit, it's about people. It's about people at the frontline. People in the low level island. It's about the workers employed in the fossil fuel industry. We need to help them find new skills. There needs to be new jobs for those communities that will be affected by the transformation of the world that is required. So it's always and only about people. Yeah, so that leads me to a question about amnesty. Certainly climate change creates problems in human rights because the world is completely connected. And similarly, and it's also part of the same bailiwick, COVID and the notion of pandemic and endemic conditions going forward also creates inequities and threats to human rights for sure and war. And of course, COVID is connected with climate change. So if you take the logic of it, Aristotelian logic would tell you that if you can solve climate change, these other things would be improved, knock wood, knock wood. But my question about amnesty is this, you kind of have a conflict because you want to stop the inexorable climate change problems, but you also want to protect human rights. And you realize that stopping climate change will help human rights. But what about your efforts at helping human rights now directly? Not as a function of climate change, but what you've always done to try to humiliate violations of human rights. Where does that fit in the way you look at this and the way your activities deal with it? Well, it fits very well. I mean, let me be clear. We are not a climate justice organization. We remain a human rights organization. But as I have mentioned, I think earlier, if I look at a two or three key dimension of our work, it is freedom of expression, freedom of association right to protest, non-discrimination, economic and social rights. So let me take the example of the first. Freedom of expression, association right to protest. At the moment, some of the most violent repression of those rights take place in the context of people defending their land or people defending their livelihood. So when we do our traditional quotation mark work on freedom of expression and association, we are often drawn into environmental climate change issues because they are just there. And frankly, even when they are not, if you look at workers issues, that repression in the context of people fighting because they've lost their jobs or because they are confronting corruption, climate is never very far from that and the transformation of the environment. So our traditional areas of work does lead us to confront the implications of climate change. And even when it doesn't, it's still a very important piece of work. So we are working for political prisoners in Russia, such as Alexei Navalny, we are doing work with Iranian defenders or Saudi journalists being imprisoned, you know, all of these are a central component of our commitment to rights and they will always do so. But I just wanted to point to the linkages and to the integration of the human story. And the other issue that we are very concerned about is non-discrimination, is a right to equality, whether it's around gender equality, LGBTI, racial equality and so on. And equality are deeply, the quality is deeply affected by climate change and climate injustice is first and foremost a question of equality. It's, you know, the people that are facing climate injustice of our people who are already very vulnerable in the same way than the pandemic affected people that were already the most vulnerable. You know, in a country like the United States, we do know by now that an African-American person was three times more likely to die of COVID than a white American around climate issues. It's very much the same. It is indigenous people. It is minority groups living in certain kind of environment that are on the frontline of the climate crisis. So climate is also a question of equality and inequality and that too is something that we do very much. But again, I also want to point out that we do work on gender equality even if it's not related, for instance, to climate. So we do a lot of work on sexual and reproductive health. We do continue to do an advocate for LGBTQI rights and that is and remains an essential part of our work. So, you know, as an organization, we do try to carry forward those issues to somehow demonstrate the integration, the integrated story of human rights and how all of those things are linked with one another. Yes, there's one other thing I wanted to talk to you about Agnes and that is this. We touched on it in our conversation before the show. You know, just in my lifetime and my life experience what I have seen and read and heard and thought about, it seems to me that the issues you describe, the injustice, the violations of human rights, the atrocities, the racism, so forth, are getting worse. I mean, look for example, just one tiny example is Roe v. Wade in the United States. It seems to be going away a step backward. And there are many places where there seems to be a step backward. Amnesty International has its work cut out for it. Going forward you have more challenges, not less. And I think of, you know, Ethiopia and Sudan and Wanda and I think of all those countries, Nicaragua recently, Venezuela and South America. When I think of China, I think of human rights going backward. And I'm not sure how to deal with that. I'm asking how you deal with it, both as Amnesty International looking down the road of what might be a more difficult world, a less just world and individually how you feel about it because you're doing it every day and you're scoping on all these things happening everywhere with your huge organization. How do you see the future? You know, it's like, it's out of Charles Dickens and the Christmas Carol. Now that we're approaching Christmas, you know, it's the dark side, it's a Christmas future. What is it for Christmas future for us? Look, you're perfectly correct. As an international community, we are confronting an unprecedented number of challenges that feed on each other. We've already spoken about the climate crisis which is really existentialist in its impact but it's not the only challenge of an historical nature we're looking at inequality that is increasing within state and between state. It had decreased for decades and now after 2008 and the financial crisis, it has skyrocketed. We're looking at an industrial revolution around information technology which is fantastic in many respects. That's why you and I are talking but as, you know, very dramatic and possibly again existentialist implications. We don't know and we do not control that innovation. We do not know what artificial intelligence will bring to the world and to our societies, biotechnology and so on and so forth. But what we do know in that it's gonna transform us deeply, it may even transform what it means to be human. The demographic divide is another big challenge for our integrated community. There is an old getting older, rich Western world and there is a young, very young youth in South's restless world. In some countries, in the global South, the medium age is 15. In our, you know, in a country in Western Europe or in Japan, it's above 50. So that too is, you know, it's a force for the world. It's a fantastic opportunity but it's also a very big challenge. Refugees, migrations are linked to that demographic divide. They are linked to climate change. By the way, I forgot to mention that earlier. You know, they embody refugees and migrants really are at the intersection of all those terrible challenges. So that's some of the challenges we're confronting. In addition to the fact that right now the international system is being reshaped, the US, China, Russia are all vying for hegemony and superpower. The multilateral system is crumbling. Frankly, it's not resisting that particular fight. The normative framework that was established, the UN Charter, the rules that brought us together after 1948 are disappearing, being challenged or not being obeyed or, you know, for whatever reasons. We're really looking at a possible normative counter-revolution internationally or domestically. You're mentioning the United States. Almost every democracies is looking at a major crisis is in the middle of a major crisis. So that, I mean, as a model of governance, I think democracy has reached an historical extremely problematic stage in its development and it could all but crumble also under the assault of populism and anger and frustration and fears about the future and so on and so forth. So, yes, I think it is fair to say that we are looking at and we are in the midst of a very, you know, really unprecedented, difficult environment. And the question I ask myself, Jay, and the question I've asked of my colleagues at Amnesty is looking at it. If I look at it from a Eurocentric standpoint, you know, from the standpoint of European history, we have to ask ourselves whether we are in the 1930s scenario looking at World War II and Holocaust, you know, Allah 21st century, or whether we will be able to be a 1948 generation. That is a generation that will be able to rebuild the world without going through a third world war. And, you know, endless numbers of genocide. That's a question I'm asking myself because I actually believe that historically speaking, this is the challenge we are confronting. Of course, myself, I want to believe that the world somehow will be able to say, we want to be that generation that will rebuild the international system that will rebuild the rules without having to destroy them first. That's what I'm hoping. That's what I'm acting. That's what I'm doing. And that's what Amnesty is doing as well. Agnes Calamard, Secretary General of the Amnesty International, you touch me in my heart, Agnes. Thank you so much for coming on our show. I hope we can circle back and talk to you again as time goes on. Thank you very much, Jay. It's a pleasure to have joined you. And if I may just say, yes, we're looking at a difficult, extremely difficult scenario. We are looking at a very historical challenge for the international community. But I just want to end on a note of hope. Around the world, people are not passive, Jay. People stand up. People go to the street. People raise rights. People go on the offensive. And they can do so without the use of violence. There are movements around us that we can join. There are many people who go on, who try to protect those that are most vulnerable. Yes, there are a lot of people attacking refugees and migrants right now, but there are also quite a few that stand up with them. So we can stand shoulder to shoulder with one another and we can confront those challenges. And there are movements around that are doing just so. So if I have to end with a note, just join them. You know, be strong. It's tough out there. It's very confronting, but we can do it. Agnes Calamard, Amnesty International, from your lips to God's ears. Thank you so much, Agnes. Thank you very much, Jay. Thank you very much. Aloha.