The Voice,
the 2025 EMERGENCY Festival

Are our voices heard? What resonance do people’s voices – individuals or groups – have with those who govern? What struggles or defence of rights unite multiple voices? What is the echo of the voice rejecting war?

It is found in the voices of journalists and aid workers who, under bombs, share the truth of war; activists who keep fighting despite the risk of imprisonment and violence; people who want to have the right to define themselves; people taking back squares, streets, roads and ports against repression, war and poverty; young people occupying spaces to claim their right to a future.

Today it is time to return to building new spaces of citizenship, renew the mechanisms of participation and imagine other means of mobilisation to reaffirm human rights for all.

The 2025 Festival is entitled The Voice, to create spaces of confrontation where we can start to imagine and build a fairer, more equal society.

Let’s practice and claim our rights, out loud. Even when the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction, we can and must find an alternative way.