Ayisha Siddiqa | Women of the Year

When Ayisha Siddiqa talks about poetry, her face lights up. For the 24-year-old Pakistani human rights and climate defender, poetry represents hope—a way to bring humanity back into the staid, high-level conversations that increasingly occupy her time.

At the annual U.N. Climate Conference in Egypt in November, she shared an original poem titled “So much about your sustainability, my people are dying” as an unvarnished rebuke of leaders’ failure to act on climate change.

“It’s an effort to preserve what I have left, while I still have the time, in written form,” she says. “Art makes life worth living, and in my opinion, it’s what makes humans worth the fight. Like all of the things that we leave behind, all the creations, wouldn’t it be so unfortunate if there’s nobody on the other side to witness and observe them?”

Read more about Ayisha Siddiqa's climate activism: https://time.com/6259119/ayisha-siddiqa/
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