Annissa Saleh /
UNHCR, Southern Latin America /
Buenos Aires, Argentina /
As my work this summer concludes, I am left wondering what the future will hold and how we can be better prepared for it. Much is uncertain about the coming months, and I am left with a universal sense of uncertainty as well. If there was ever a time for a new system of human rights to come about, it would be now, as we redesign “normal.”
Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan poet and historian who often writes about economic and political issues, wrote a poem about the right to dream. To close out my fellowship and to highlight the trust that many people had for a better normal on the horizon, I would like to share his poem with you.
Although the 2025 Galeano writes about is much closer now than it was when the poem was published, the message remains: if it were not for the right to dream of a better future and to hope for new possibilities, our other rights, which are inscribed and proclaimed by the United Nations, would be all but null.