'Artistic Freedom: the Road Ahead'- Ghawgha performs at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris
On 13 February 2025, UNESCO, in collaboration with the Permanent Delegations of Norway and Sweden, hosted the event ‘Artistic Freedom: The Road Ahead’ at its headquarters in Paris. The event marked the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
Addressing both opportunities and challenges in the field of freedom of expression, ‘Artistic Freedom: The Road Ahead’ explored ways in which international and intersectional cooperation can strengthen artistic freedom and protect cultural expressions.
Welcoming remarks were delivered by H.E. Halvor Hvideberg, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Delegate of Norway to UNESCO and H.E. Helena Sångeland, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Delegate of Sweden to UNESCO. Ambassador Hvideberg underscored the right to free expression as fundamental to democracy, reaffirming Norway’s commitment to these values amid growing threats and the evolving role of technology. Ambassador Sångeland emphasised the ongoing efforts needed to uphold cultural rights and underlined the necessity for collective responsibility in defending them.
UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture Ernesto Ottone R. emphasised the importance of empowering artists and cultural workers worldwide as they face increasing persecution and, often, neglect from different sectors. He commended Norway and Sweden’s prioritisation of artistic and cultural freedom, highlighting the importance of unity and impactful initiatives in countering worrying trends.
Ghawgha, renowned musician from Afghanistan who was the ICORN resident in Harstad between 2022 and 2024 and supported by Safemuse, performed a musical dialogue with Anja Lauvdal (grand piano and synthesisers) and Marianna Sangita Røe (percussion and vocals), including songs from her latest album ‘Qaf’.
Deeyah Khan, UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity, called in a video greeting for global support for artistic freedom. She stressed the role of art in fostering empathy, connections, and understanding, particularly at a time when disinformation and hate speech create polarisation and threatens our values and freedoms.
Examining global challenges to artistic freedom and the mechanisms available to protect artists at risk, a following panel featuring Kathy Rowland (ArtsEquator, Singapore), Abdullah Alkafri (Ettijahat, Lebanon), and Andra Matei (Avant Garde Lawyers, France), underscored the urgent need for better-long-term support, cross-sector collaboration, and more artist-centred policy development.
The event concluded with a strong statement by Ghawgha:
‘My mother told me to come here through the path of law; but today, I have arrived through the path of art. Because in a land where justice has abandoned the law, art endures still.
I am one among the countless women of Afghanistan; women who breathe life into the ruins. I come from a land where laws and time itself are rewritten at the will of those who destroy; where Nowruz and Yalda are erased from memory, where children are deprived of the joy of spring, where people are forbidden to breathe.
I have witnessed too many deaths: shoes tangled in barbed wire, once carrying the weight of dreams; silent cries in the darkness of prisons and refugee camps; the dimmed eyes of mothers who were never given time to grieve; bodies swallowed by the sea; names and stories lost to the depths of the water.
I am both a witness and a storyteller of dreams that perished on the way. A voice from a silenced history.
And yet, today we know; many women of Afghanistan still live in the shadows, behind shuttered windows, in houses that have become prisons, on streets that are now forbidden to them. They have been sentenced to imposed silence; a silence that is not merely the absence of voice, but the absence of freedom, of space, of a future.
Yet the future of freedom is the future of human voice. Silence was never the choice of the women of Afghanistan but standing firm against the decree of silence; this is our choice.
Our voice is the road we walk in defiance. We are voices that cross borders, emerging from darkness, standing against silence.
As long as the freedom of art remains, hope will endure, and truth will not be forgotten.
But will the world stand with us? Will we, together, ensure the freedom of voice and art?
This is not merely a question; This is a moment that will weigh on the conscience of today’s world.
