Video
20 October 2021

Fundamental Rights Forum 2021 – Highlights

Highlights from the Fundamental Rights Forum 2021 – Michael O’Flaherty on the Forum as a roadmap for a vision of hope.

Transcript

To a degree that I’m not used to at these types of event people have spoken about what motivates them personally what drives them.

People have said tough things at the Forum there's by no means been agreement but at no point have I ever heard anybody pushing back or somehow trampling over the ideas of another.

There's a recognition that only by active listening to each other even where we're quite far apart are we going to find any sense of how to go forward.

I come away from the Forum still hopeful, but it's a different hope.

It's a smarter hope, it's a more nuanced hope.

A hope that recognises the level of risk.

It's a hope with content.

I have some bits of a roadmap coming out of the Forum that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't participated over the last two days.

Eva Schloss (Holocaust survivor and campaigner)

In life you must always hope for a better future, or you won't be able to carry on.

Like a mountain climber who does not surrender, to the treacherous cliffs on the right and left, one should move forward and keep climbing.