Human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman has called on people to hold firmly to their dreams of dignity, freedom, equality and the rule of law, describing them not only as fundamental rights but as a moral responsibility owed to future generations.
Speaking at Lund Cathedral in Sweden at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the We Still Have a Dream exhibition, Karman said these values are essential to keeping hope alive at a time when the world is confronting war, authoritarianism, polarization, hatred, climate change and widening social and economic injustice.
She said that keeping those dreams alive demands courage to defend them, as well as a sense of universal human solidarity capable of resisting exclusion and marginalization. The struggles and sacrifices of people across the Arab Spring, she stressed, were never acts of self-interest, but part of a broader struggle for freedom, justice and democratic change.
Karman also paid tribute to the resilience of the Yemeni and Iranian peoples in confronting authoritarian rule and sectarian militias. She argued that the prolonged conflicts and instability in both countries cannot be understood simply as internal crises, but must also be viewed in the context of interventions by authoritarian regimes and international actors seeking to weaken national institutions and frustrate peoples’ aspirations to build states grounded in justice, development and the rule of law.
Beyond the Sectarian Narrative
Karman warned against reducing the region’s conflicts to a simplistic Sunni-Shia confrontation, stressing that accurately identifying the nature of a conflict is essential to understanding how it can be resolved.
Reflecting on her shared struggle with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, she said the deeper confrontation is between peoples seeking democracy and freedom and authoritarian and theocratic systems determined to preserve power.
In her view, sectarian divisions are often used to obscure political struggles and serve agendas aimed at suppressing popular movements and preventing peaceful democratic change.
The Cost of Double Standards
Karman also challenged Western governments and the international system over what she described as the abandonment of democratic and humanitarian principles in pursuit of narrower political interests.
She argued that fear of popular democratic movements had led Western powers to accommodate authoritarian regimes and, in some cases, legitimize armed militias. Yemen, she said, offers a particularly clear example, pointing to developments following the 2011 revolution and the Stockholm Agreement, whose provisions, she argued, were never adequately translated into realities on the ground.
Karman warned that the consequences of tolerating authoritarianism and remaining silent in the face of abuses do not remain confined to the countries where they occur. The international community is now confronting their wider repercussions, she said, including threats to freedom of navigation in the Bab al-Mandab and Strait of Hormuz and the broader instability associated with the war in Ukraine.
Nonviolence as a Path to Change
Karman reaffirmed her longstanding commitment to peaceful struggle and nonviolence, describing them as essential tools for political transformation and for building sustainable democratic states.
She noted that peaceful popular movements have succeeded in forcing authoritarian rulers from power, while emphasizing that a commitment to nonviolence does not negate the right of peoples to defend themselves when confronted with mass killing.
She urged people in democratic societies, particularly in Sweden and across Europe, to remain vigilant in protecting their own democratic institutions from both internal and external threats and to demand accountability from governments that support authoritarian rulers.
For Karman, genuine solidarity among peoples remains central to confronting the crises of the present. Empathy that crosses borders, she said, can help break the isolation on which authoritarianism depends and create the conditions for peoples to stand together in defense of freedom, dignity and justice.
Here is The full text of Tawakkol Karman’s speech:
Ten years after the We Have a Dream exhibition, we still have a dream.
A dream of dignity for all.
A dream of freedom for all.
A dream of justice for all.
The dream we must carry with us, the dream we must believe in, is rooted in dignity, freedom, equality, the rule of law — and, of course, freedom. We must never give up on our dreams, because our dreams give our lives purpose in this world.
And in a world suffering from wars and conflicts, from the rise of authoritarian regimes, polarization, hatred, racism, climate change, social injustice and economic injustice, we have to keep going. We have to carry our dreams with us, because those dreams are what keep us alive.
We must not give up on our dreams. They are our responsibility, and they are a responsibility we pass on to the generations that come after us.
But dreams require courage.
Courage is the tool we use to defend our dreams. And dreams also require empathy. Empathy is essential if our dreams are to include everyone. Otherwise, the dream becomes the dream of one person, one family or one group, while everyone else is left behind.
That is why people rose up and sacrificed for freedom, for justice and equality, and for democracy. They were not selfish. The people who took to the streets across the countries of the Arab Spring were not selfish.
And I believe that the people of my country, and the people of our sister country, Iran, are still struggling for freedom, justice, equality, human rights and democracy. They have not abandoned their dreams. They have not abandoned their faith in those dreams, or their belief in themselves and in their ability to make those dreams a reality.
So what are we seeing today in my country, Yemen?
Amid all this chaos and war, amid the Houthi militia and the conflicts and wars across the Arabian Peninsula, amid what is often presented as a conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, these are merely different faces of ugly authoritarian systems and dictatorships, backed by international actors who want to destroy what we have achieved and prevent people from living freely and building new states based on justice and development.
The people of Iran have suffered enormously. They have sacrificed enormously. They have struggled peacefully for justice and freedom for years. And suddenly, they find that their dreams may have to wait much longer because of this terrible conspiracy and this war — a war waged both from within the regime and by dictators outside Iran who chose to intervene and crush people who had taken to the streets in peaceful protest against the clerical regime and Ayatollah Khamenei.
They enabled the dictatorship in Iran by failing to stand with the Iranian people against the clerical, theocratic regime.
The same is true in Yemen.
When we launched our peaceful revolution against the dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011, it was a great peaceful revolution. We acted with dignity, courage and empathy, and we succeeded in forcing him to step down peacefully.
Then we entered a transitional period. We brought Yemenis together around one table through the National Dialogue Conference. We were only steps away from a new constitution and a referendum.
Then the counter-revolution came.
It was led by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, while the international community remained silent — particularly Western governments, which were afraid of the courage of the peoples of the Arab Spring and their determination to pursue freedom and democracy.
Western governments chose instead to align themselves with dictators in other countries, believing that this was preferable to standing with their peoples.
They were afraid. They were afraid of the courage of people and of their hope for democracy.
And now they are paying the price for that cowardice.
They betrayed our aspirations, our dreams and our sacrifices for freedom. And now they are paying the price in what they see today in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab, and in the threats to international peace and security.
It is not because we abandoned our dream.
It is because Western governments abandoned their values.
That is what happened.
I am standing here today in this magnificent cathedral, Lund Cathedral, a place that represents 900 years of resistance to war and hatred. And I say to you: we are still holding on to our dream. We are still holding on to our values.
So who abandoned those values?
The authoritarian regimes in our countries, of course, were behind the counter-revolution. I do not need to speak about Russia and China. You know that they are authoritarian regimes.
The problem came from Western governments that abandoned their own values and left people alone in their struggle for freedom.
We are not asking Western governments, or anyone else, to intervene militarily in our countries.
No.
We are asking them to stop legitimizing dictators. We are asking them to stop legitimizing militias.
That is what happened with the Stockholm Agreement.
It was an important agreement. It helped Yemenis halt the war, or at least establish a temporary truce. But unfortunately, there was no follow-through. Legitimacy was given to the militias, but implementation was not pursued.
Agreements of this kind must be followed by implementation. They cannot simply confer legitimacy and then leave those responsible free to continue what they are doing.
I am here today, and I thank you for inviting me to this 10th anniversary of We Have a Dream.
I am very proud to be here with my wonderful friends and with so many inspiring figures — including the Dalai Lama and my dear colleague Shirin Ebadi. We are also joined by the spirit of Sweden’s former foreign minister, my great friend Anna, who was tragically murdered and whose memory we honor here today.
And I salute every woman who struggles for justice and peace, and every man who struggles for justice, peace, equality and democracy.
And you, the people of Sweden, face a struggle that is not so different from the one we face in our countries.
You must defend your democracy. You must accept and embrace one another. Do not allow anyone — any voice or any outside force — to divide you, as has happened in our countries.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Keep defending your values with courage and hope.
Hope is the most important act of resistance.
Be people who make others uncomfortable by demanding freedom, justice and democracy. Be a source of discomfort to dictators.
And I always say to people, beginning with the people of Yemen:
Be the nightmare of tyrants.
I remember when I was released after being detained. I went to the city of Taiz, where there were huge crowds of people.
And I had a phrase that I used then. I don't know exactly how to translate it into English, but the meaning is this:
You cannot drown out the dictator's voice unless you become louder in confronting him.
That is very important.
And there is one more thing I want to say to my colleagues from Ukraine:
We stand with your struggle.
Your freedom is our freedom. It is the freedom of all Arab peoples living under dictatorships.
Your struggle is our struggle.
You, the Ukrainian people, have paid the price for indifference and for the failure of the international community to act. And, once again, forgive me for saying this, you have also paid the price for the position taken by what we call the democratic Western states — when they remained silent about Putin, and when they remained silent about Putin's crimes in Syria.
That silence emboldened him to invade Ukraine.
And now everyone is paying the price.
There is another issue I want to address: democracy.
We are peoples who have suffered and sacrificed to complete the democratic transition in our countries. But the problem today goes far beyond the Arab world.
It is here too, in what we call the Western democratic countries.
Fixing this begins with ending double standards in the international system — with ending the interests and calculations that lead governments to abandon people in so many parts of the world, including Palestine, where the double standards are so painfully clear.
That is the first point.
The second point is this: you are facing a serious threat because your democracies are at stake.
When democratic states abandon their values, beginning with accountability, democracy itself is weakened.
We cannot talk about the United States, for example, without talking about holding its presidents accountable when they wage wars in our countries, when crimes are committed, when corruption prevails and when justice is absent.
And you, here in Europe—especially in Europe—you must raise your voices and hold your governments accountable. Hold them accountable when they ally with dictators, when they shield their stolen wealth in your banks, and when they protect them while fueling conflicts and wars. You must speak out when they stand silent in the face of racism, hatred, genocide, apartheid, and tyranny.
Your people must join us in raising their voices. You have a duty to safeguard your own societies and work to dismantle the systemic failures at home.
And yes, absolutely, my belief in nonviolence means more to me than anything else. I know I will hold fast to this conviction until the very day I die.
For me, nonviolence is not simply an idea.
It is a practice.
Without our nonviolent struggle, we would never have forced the dictator of Yemen to step down. Without our peaceful struggle, we would never have brought about the change that took place in the region.
True, armed factions and limited armed actions did appear in certain nations. However, they only arose in response to the mass murder committed by dictatorships against unarmed demonstrators.
That is why nonviolence was, and remains, one of our most powerful tools. And I firmly believe that through nonviolence, we will successfully build true democratic states in the wake of our revolutions.
But that does not mean that we condemn people who were forced to defend themselves.
Look, for example, at what happened in Syria under Bashar al-Assad.
I continue to believe that nonviolence must remain our first choice.
Shirin is from Iran. She is a Shia Muslim.
I am from Yemen. I am a Sunni Muslim.
And yet we are fighting the same battle against dictatorship.
So do not describe what is happening to the Arab peoples as a conflict between Sunnis and Shias.
It is a struggle between dictatorship and free, democratic peoples.
And this is extremely important: we must describe the conflict correctly.
The struggle is for freedom.
People and countries around the world who work for freedom, and who dream of freedom — we must all stand together.
That is our path to salvation. That is our path to saving our world.
The best way to address the problems around us is for our solidarity to be genuine, sincere, and direct.
And we must never mistake empathy for weakness.
No.
Empathy is strength.
It means being strong enough to help those around you and to support your community.
If there were true empathy, we would not see some countries living in immense wealth while others remain desperately poor.
We would not have such extreme disparities between the rich and the poor.
If there were empathy, we would not see countries invading and killing people. We would not have dictators.
Empathy matters enormously.
It means feeling what others feel. It means supporting them. It means accepting responsibility. It means putting yourself on the front lines to defend the rights of others — socially, politically, economically, and in every other sphere.
That is empathy.
And empathy is not simply charity.
It is responsibility.
And it is, in fact, a solution.
If there were empathy, we would not be facing global warming on the scale we see today, while companies, individuals, and governments remain willing to destroy the planet for narrow interests.
Empathy is the solution.
Thank you very much.
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