Shows
Glocal CitizensEpisode 272: Climate Reparations: A Critical Issue at the Intersection of Racial, Climate and Economic Justice with Hélène HimmerGreetings Glocal Citizens!
This week Hélène Himmer, a French national with roots in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, now based in Portugal joins me in conversation about her current work at African Futures Lab (AfaLab) leading a project on climate reparations. I met Hélène last November at FORGE: Harnessing Creative Arts for Reparatory Justice, a convening of artists, media, cultural workers, civil society, and government leaders across Africa, Europe and the U.S. to further the movement for reparations. The event took place in Accra, Ghana and featured Glocal Citizens Esther Armah, Makmid Kama...
2025-05-2048 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 6 (Part 2) - Reparations for climate and biodiversity loss: Resistance and alternatives to market-based approachesSend us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futures Antérieur, hosts Liliane Umubyeyi and Meghna Abraham welcome Ruth Nyambura, a Kenyan ecofeminist and organiser, to discuss the biodiversity crisis in Africa and its links to colonial and neo-colonial exploitation.Nyambura explains that biodiversity loss is not just an environmental crisis - it is a political and economic crisis driven by industrial agriculture, extractivism and trade policies that prioritize foreign interests over local communities. Biodiversity loss directly impacts food security, water resources and traditional livelihoods, disproportionately harming local communities, especially women, who are o...
2025-05-0745 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 6 (Part 1) - Reparations for climate and biodiversity loss: Deep dive into challenges and solutionsSend us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futures Antérieur, hosts Liliane Umubyeyi and Hélène Himmer welcome Meghna Abraham, an international human rights lawyer and expert on economic, social and cultural rights, to discuss the biodiversity crisis, its causes and possible solutions. Meghna explains that biodiversity loss is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with up to one million species at risk. This threatens the resilience of ecosystems and their ability to mitigate climate change. The main drivers of this crisis are land-use change, deforestation and extractive industries, largely fuelled by overconsumption in hig...
2025-03-2455 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 5- Fadhel Kaboub: International Financial Institutions Rooted in the Intrinsic Link between Colonialism and Capitalism: How to End a System of Domination Through Climate Reparations?Send us a textThis episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur features Professor Fadhel Kaboub, who highlights the urgent need for decolonizing climate frameworks alongside a radical global economic transformation. He critiques the existing global financial system, in which $2 trillion flows annually from the Global South to the Global North, moving in the wrong direction while undermining development. Kaboub argues that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank exacerbate this imbalance by imposing conditionalities through loans, deliberately creating debt crises that keep the Global South trapped in cycles of dependency.Fadhel Kaboub h...
2024-11-2756 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 4- Chenai Mukumba: How to Finance Climate Reparations: Does the Framework of International Financial Institutions Facilitate Healing from the Past for a Better Future?Send us a textThis episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, co-hosted by African Futures Lab Director Liliane Umubyeyi and Program Assistant Helene Himmer, features a compelling discussion with Chenai Mukumba, Executive Director of Tax Justice Network Africa, on the urgent need to fund climate reparations.Mukumba unpacks the enduring economic impacts of colonialism, which have left African nations dependent on extractive industries and disadvantaged in global value chains. The current international financial structure, led by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, she explains, reinforces this dependency and lacks the democratic accountability needed t...
2024-11-0642 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 3- Adrián Martinez Blanco: International Law, Regulations & Negotiations: Addressing the Inefficiency of Loss & Damages Fund and the Role of Litigation in Climate ReparationsSend us a textThis episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur is co-hosted by Patrick Toussaint, an international environmental lawyer, and Helene Himmer, Program Assistant at African Futures Lab. Both welcomed the special guest Adrián Martinez Blanco, Director of La Ruta del Clima. The discussion finds roots in a recent case about the ongoing struggle of communities in Côte d'Ivoire against the Belgian multinational SIAT over allegations of land grabbing, deforestation and human rights violations related to its palm oil and rubber plantations. Martinez Blanco emphasizes the concept of "loss and damage," criticizing the new...
2024-10-2445 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 2- Ineza Umuhoza Grace: Activism, Narratives & Media Representation: What is the climate reparations movement missing to emerge and be a priority at the international agenda?Send us a textIn this podcast episode, Hélène Himmer and Brigette Perenyi, storytelling manager at Reform Initiative host a discussion with Ineza Umuhoza Grace, CEO of the Green Protector and Co. and founder of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, about the need for climate reparations and the challenges faced by the Global South, particularly Africa, which bears the brunt of climate impacts despite contributing minimally to global emissions. This episode explores how youth activism is driving the climate justice and reparations movement, with a focus on amplifying the voices of vulnerable groups like wo...
2024-10-0942 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurSeason III Episode 1: From responsibility to reparations of the climate crisis: why the biggest polluters must pay up for climate damages?Send us a textIn the first episode of the third season of the Future Perfect-Futur Antérieur podcast, Professor Joshua Castellino, the Co-Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International and Professor of International & Comparative Law at University of Derby, UK, discusses how marginalized racial groups, particularly in Africa, bear the heaviest burden of the global ecological crisis. This episode examines the colonial roots of the climate crisis, emphasizing that European colonialism established extractive systems that treat nature as a commodity, driving both wealth inequality and environmental destruction. He critiques current environmental policies, particularly those that prioritize c...
2024-09-2545 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 6: Juliette Nijimbere : “La montagne qui a accouché d’une souris” : espoirs et échec de la commission parlementaire belge sur le passé colonialSend us a textDans cet épisode de Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, Juliette Nijimbere, militante de longue date pour les droits humains, les droits de la femme et la lutte contre le racisme en Belgique, nous parle du déroulement et des résultats de la commission parlementaire belge sur le passé colonial du pays. Première en son genre, la commission chargée d'examiner le passé colonial de la Belgique au Congo, au Burundi et au Rwanda a été créée en juillet 2020, à la suite des manifestations Black Lives Matter. Juliette décrit les espoirs qu...
2023-07-0534 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 5: Jean Casimir & Michel DeGraff : Onè ak jistis: Avenues for reparations in HaitiSend us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, we have the honor of welcoming two eminent scholars of Haiti, Professors Jean Casimir and Michel DeGraff, who speak with us about the legacies of colonialism in Haiti and the ongoing fight for justice and repair for the island. Prof. Casimir discusses the place and role of the Haitian state in demands for reparations from France, as well as what solidarity with other movements for historical justice across Africa and its diasporas might look l...
2023-06-151h 06
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 4: Malcom Ferdinand : Le scandale du chlordécone et la continuité des violences coloniales en Martinique et en GuadeloupeSend us a textDans cet épisode de Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, Malcom Ferdinand, politiste et ingénieur en sciences environnementales martiniquais, revient sur le scandale sanitaire du chlordécone dans les territoires français d'outre-mer de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe. Entre 1972 et 1993, le chlordécone, produit chimique hautement toxique, a été utilisé dans les bananeraies de Martinique et de Guadeloupe, alors que des études avaient déjà établi son caractère cancérigène et le développement de troubles neurologiques graves aux États-Unis. Aujourd'hui, 90 % de la population de...
2023-06-0143 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 3: Jephta Nguherimo: Reparations to restore dignity: Pursuing justice for the ovaHerero and Nama genocide in NamibiaSend us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, Jephta Nguherimo, founder of the OvaHerero People’s Memorial and Reconstruction Foundation, speaks to us about the legacies of Germany’s genocide of the ovaHerero and Nama people in 1904-1908. It is not common knowledge that Germany’s first concentration camps were in Namibia; the camps were among the tools of genocide employed by the German colonial state. Describing how the genocide’s impact endures in Namibia’s landscape, in bodies, in families, as well as in the country’s economic cond...
2023-05-1751 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 1: Mireille-Tsheusi Robert : En quête de respect et de justice : regards sur les luttes antiracistes et décoloniales en Belgique (French)Send us a textDans cet épisode, Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, activiste antiraciste, afro-féministe et décoloniale de longue date, présente une histoire et une analyse complexes de l'activisme décolonial en Belgique. Décrivant son parcours au cours des 25 dernières années, elle présente les défis de l'activisme antiraciste et décolonial en Belgique. Dans ses propos, on voit ainsi la manière dont les revendications du mouvement BLM de 2020 en Belgique s'inscrivent dans la continuité des revendications des acteurs anticoloniaux au Congo et ailleurs en Afrique du début du 20e siècle. Mire...
2023-04-1958 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurS2 Episode 2: Kwanza Musi dos Santos: The need for an intersectional approach to fighting racism in Italy (English)Send us a textIn this episode, Kwanza Musi dos Santos, Italian activist and co-founder of anti-racist organization Questaèroma, speaks with us about the state of the struggle against racism and xenophobia in Italy. Among other topics, Kwanza discusses the challenges of Italy’s citizenship law, how the country’s colonial past and migration are addressed in national politics, and the implications of the recent election of a far-right government for the fight against racism (it’s not as straightforward as you might think!). Pointing to the links between casual and structural racism, the endurin...
2023-04-1245 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 6: Menna Agha: Reclaiming space and being guided by our foremothers’ voices (English)Send us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, we speak with Prof. Menna Agha, architect and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada. Menna’s research focuses on gender and space, with a particular emphasis on displaced Nubian populations. In this conversation, we learn not only about how, for a population for whom the Nile river has been a life source for millennia, forced displacement is epistemicide, but also about the legacy of refusal that continues to inform Nubian populations’ claims to their homelands - as well as Me...
2022-11-3050 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 5 : Elom 20ce : “Notre force est dans l’amour" : Le rôle de l’intime dans les luttes pour la justice raciale (français)Send us a textDans cet épisode de Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, nous accueillons Elom 20ce, artiste polyvalent - rappeur, réalisateur, designer, penseur, militant - africain d’origine togolaise. Au travers de son parcours artistique et politique, Elom 20ce nous emmène dans une discussion sur le rôle de l'intime dans les luttes pour la justice raciale, et, notamment, sur ce que veut dire “justice raciale” depuis le continent africain dans une perspective panafricaniste. Il nous explique comment, pour lui, tout combat doit passer par le fait de regagner de l'amour pour soi-même.
2022-11-0943 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 4: Mame-Fatou Niang: Working with, through, and around silences in the debate on race in France (English)Send us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, we welcome Dr. Mame Fatou Niang, polyvalent US-based French scholar, filmmaker, writer, racial justice activist, and AfaLab Fellow. Mame discusses the state of the debate on race in France, what it means when your country, a country that prizes language, does not have - refuses - the words to name you and your experience. She talks about racial justice work against this invisibilization as mold-defying mosaic-making, about her enduring belief in universalism, about finding companionship in spaces of exclusion, and leveraging the s...
2022-10-2645 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 3 : Noureddine Amara : "La mémoire ne vaut pas justice" : Violences d'État et crimes coloniaux en Algérie (français)Send us a textDans cet épisode de Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, nous accueillons le Dr Noureddine Amara, historien de la citoyenneté et du droit colonial en Algérie et plus largement en Afrique du Nord. Il nous permet d’aborder des sujets assez controversés tels que le passé colonial de la France en Algérie, ses conséquences contemporaines, la conceptualisation de ces événements passés ainsi que la relation actuelle entre les deux Etats. Cette conversation porte aussi sur la manière dont le passé colonial - et les crimes comm...
2022-10-1244 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 2: Amara Enyia & Makmid Kamara: Building a Global African movement for reparations and racial healing (English)Send us a textIn this episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, we welcome Dr. Amara Enyia, President of Global Black, and Makmid Kamara, Executive Director of the Africa Transitional Justice Fund (ATJLF). ATJLF convened the recent Accra Summit on Reparations and Racial Healing (August 2022), a gathering that brought together activists, policymakers, and foundations to start establishing a common agenda for reparations that centers the African continent. The Accra Summit built on the Reparations and Healing Convening, a weeklong meeting of reparations and healing experts hosted by Nicole Hannah Jones and facilitated b...
2022-09-2848 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurEpisode 1 : Olivia Rutazibwa : Décoloniser le développement international et repenser la solidarité (français)Send us a textDans cet épisode de Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, Olivia Rutazibwa, spécialiste belge et rwandaise des relations internationales basée au Royaume-Uni, activiste décoloniale et abolitionniste, professeure, ancienne journaliste et auteure de nombreuses publications, nous explique pourquoi la décolonisation du développement international est nécessaire et à quoi ce processus pourrait ressembler. Nous parlons également de ce que cela signifie de repenser les mouvements de solidarité, et des différences de perspective entre l’Afrique continentale et la diaspora africaine dans le débat sur les réparations. À l’éc...
2022-09-1339 min
Future Perfect | Futur AntérieurIntroduction à Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, le podcast de l'African Futures LabSend us a textBienvenue dans notre nouveau podcast ! Dans cet épisode d'introduction, Liliane Umubyeyi et Amah Edoh partagent les raisons qui les ont conduit à lancer Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, la signification et les origines du nom du podcast, et leur vision de ce podcast comme un outil pour soutenir les luttes pour la justice raciale en Europe, en Afrique et en Amérique.Cet épisode est aussi disponible en anglais ici. Crédits pour la production: Amah Edoh; Liliane Umubyeyi; Matt Dann. Enregistrement et montage: Matt Dann. Musique: “African Dreams,” écrit et composé p...
2022-09-0722 minFuture Perfect | Futur AntérieurIntroduction to Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, the African Futures Lab’s podcastSend us a textWelcome to our new podcast! In this introductory episode, Liliane Umubyeyi and Amah Edoh share their motivations for launching Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur, the significance and origins of the podcast’s name, and their vision for this podcast as a tool to support racial justice struggles across Europe, Africa, and the Americas.A French language version of this episode is also available here.Credits: Production: Amah Edoh; Liliane Umubyeyi; Matt Dann. Recording and editing: Matt Dann. Music: “African Dreams,” written and composed by Seun Anikulapo Kuti. Artwork: Amélie Umuh...
2022-09-0723 min