The 2021 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture was given Agnès Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty International. The title of the lecture is ‘A Global Compact for a World beyond COVID.’
About the Lecturer
Dr. Agnès Callamard is Secretary General at Amnesty International. She leads the organisation’s human rights work and is its chief spokesperson. She is responsible for providing overall leadership of the International Secretariat, including setting the strategic direction for the organization and managing relations with Amnesty International’s national entities.
Dr. Callamard has been a prominent figure in the human rights world for decades. In 2016, she was appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary killings. Along with her UN work, Dr. Callamard was also the Director of Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University in New York. Previously, she was Executive Director of the freedom of expression organization Article 19. She returns to Amnesty after 20 years, having previously held the role of Chef de Cabinet for then-Secretary General Pierre Sané. As a leading advocate for freedom of expression, a feminist and an anti-racism activist, she pushes out the frontiers of rights through her scholarship and advocacy.
About the lecture
In her lecture, Dr Callamard argues that necropolitics during the COVID-19 pandemic has perpetuated inequalities, and points to the preventable deaths resulting from vaccine nationalism as a precursor to future suffering should normative leadership and global solidarity continue to be sidelined by power and profit.
She explains that a reset or reboot is essential and that a new global compact for a post-pandemic world must be struck. She notes that this global compact must be grounded in international norms and outlines the leadership required to see it realised.
Agnès Callamard with the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt