What is global democracy? What does it entail and what can it look like? If, like many other people, you feel frustrated about the incapacity of current political systems to meaningfully tackle urgent crises, you feel like your voice isn’t being heard, and you wish to see new ways of making decisions at the global level, this interview might inspire to be the change you want to see in the world.
I had the honour and pleasure of speaking with Colombe Cahen-Salavdor, a political activist advocating for grassroot global solutions to global problems. In the aftermath of Brexit, she co-founded Volt, the first pan-European political party. It elected representatives at the 2019 and 2024 European elections on a vision of a more united and progressive European Union. Realising the global nature of many of the issues they were dealing with, Colombe took it one step further and created Atlas in 2020, a global political movement seeking to unite humanity in tackling its most urgent threats. It is present in over 134 countries and has a membership of more than 25,000 people. In an effort to raise awareness about the inadequacy of current global governance systems, Colombe is now running to become Secretary-General of the United Nations. She is also a board member of the Democracy and Culture Foundation, supporting their work in improving and innovating democracy.
In this interview, we talk about Atlas and the movement’s successes and failures, Colombe’s plans for reforming the United Nations to become a more effective site of global governance, and what the future of global democracy can look like.
Introducing Atlas, the global political movement
Sophie: Thank you Colombe Cahen-Salvador for being with me today. Colombe, you are running to become UN Secretary General and you are also the co-founder of Atlas, the global movement, the global political movement. And before that, you were also Co founder of Volt Europe, the first pan-European political party. So could you tell us a little bit more about yourself and about Atlas?
Colombe: It’s so nice to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I’m Colombe, I’m originally French, and I’ve been working on mobilising people across borders for the last eight years, with the idea that regardless of where we come from, regardless of our differences, whether they be linguistic, cultural and national, or others, we share, at the end of the day, most of the same hopes and dreams and the same fears. It sounds a bit idealistic, but it’s actually true.
Having worked with people in over 134 countries on a daily basis, I can tell you that we all face the same issues. The level to which those issues impact us are very different. The impact that they have on our daily lives are very different, but the issues remain the same. We all want to live in a safe environment, we want to be able to be ourselves, to have access to basic services like healthcare, housing and so on. And ideally, we’d like not to leave the world even more fucked up than the one we live in today. The order of things and how it impacts people everyday changes, but regardless of where we live, we kind of want the same thing.
Now, with Atlas, I realised that there was a huge strength in actually uniting, if we had the same hopes and dreams and if a lot of those threats or potential opportunities and dreams impact us, why can’t we work together to solve them, especially when we’re talking about global threats? At Atlas, we consider that they are more or less five survival threats: threats that impact all of humanity and our physical survival. They’re pretty straightforward:
- One of them is climate change. You know, unless we take radical climate action, we’re all gonna die. It does not look that good.
- The second one is poverty. One in ten human beings on the on Earth lives in extreme poverty. That’s less than $1.9 a day. It’s insane, when we have enough money to be able to not have anyone live in poverty.
- The third one is pandemic, so global health. I don’t really need to spell it out. We’ve just been through COVID-19. We had high risk of other pandemics. We’re not preparing for it. It doesn’t look that great either.
- Wars. Just look at Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, I mean the list goes on, right. It’s killing an enormous amount of people, displacing many more and so on and so forth.
- Unregulated technology. So, AI is the typical example and it represents great opportunities, amazing ones. This video: there’s an automatic transcript, right, on our recording right now. It makes our life much easier. It’s also going to impact jobs and the way we conduct wars, the way people trust or distrust democracy. It has the potential to uproot a society.
And the list goes on from dictatorships to nuclear weapons and so on. So, we’re facing those threats and we can’t deal with them on our own. We can’t deal with them only within our own little countries. As you can hear from my accent I’m French and France is never going to solve any of those threats. We have no choice but to unite and work together. So I co-founded Atlas and, long story short, we have 25,000 people in over 134 countries and it is getting ready to run for elections across the world to save political power and be able to implement coordinated responses to those global challenges. Complicated words…. In short, we need political power to solve those threats. So let’s get it!
The UN is failing at ensuring peace and security. Just open the news and it's pretty clear. It's succeeding at a lot of things, right, the UN managed to eradicate polio, it’s distributing countless meals a day, it’s helping refugees… I mean, it's doing a great job, but politically it's not doing so well. And I think it's because it lacks political leadership.
Priorities for the next UN Secretary-General
Sophie: Wow, congratulations. Such a great, great, great career so far. I can’t wait to see what you’re up to next. And one of those things is that you are running for UN Secretary-General (UNSG), like I said. So could you tell us a bit more about this process, what it entails, the selection, and what would be your priorities if you are our next UN Secretary General?
Colombe: I still can’t get used to that sentence! It’s the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to me. To make it simple, we don’t have a global political system. We live in a global society. We’re all connected. We’re speaking from different countries. We’re facing the same threats. We don’t have a global political system that represents us or that is capable of dealing with those threats.
The closest thing we have is the United Nations. It was built after the Second World War with the idea of preserving peace and security. I love it. Let’s do it. Let’s preserve peace and security, right. It’s the right thing to do. Not doing so well either… The UN is failing at ensuring peace and security. Just open the news and it’s pretty clear. It’s succeeding at a lot of things, right, the UN managed to eradicate polio, it’s distributing countless meals a day, it’s helping refugees… I mean, it’s doing a great job, but politically it’s not doing so well. And I think it’s because it lacks political leadership. So, I’m not pretending I’m the solution to all of the world’s problems. I’m definitely not, but I think the system that appoints the chief of the UN (the Secretary-General is the chief of the UN)… it’s so messed up that it means that this person cannot do anything, and that the UN is stalled on most major issues.
So to make it simple, the UN is a membership organisation of 193 countries. Not all countries are included: Palestine, Taiwan are not Member States, they don’t have a voice. At the end of the day, five countries actually have a voice and those are the so-called winners of the Second World War: France, the UK, the US, China, and Russia. They have a veto power over anything that matters at the UN and, at the end of the day, they choose who the next UN chief is. When you consider the geopolitical situation in which we are, if you put Russia and France or the US or the UK in a room, they won’t agree on anything. Anything. Let alone one person to represent humanity’s interests, since their interests are so divergent… It means that we get someone who often is the minimum common denominator or who’s completely unable to speak out about what those powers are doing. And those five powers are committing war crimes or crimes against humanity, each one of them. To different scales, to different extent, but all of them. As a result, they systematically block meaningful political action on a lot of topics.
Without explaining what’s wrong with the system, it’s difficult to understand why I’m running for UNSG. The system is so messed up that it doesn’t enable the UN to do what it wants. At Atlas, because we want to create a global political system, we think it’s needed, we said “OK, let’s run for UNSG, that’s the normal thing to do!”. Obviously there’s no election, it’s undemocratic. Five countries decide behind closed doors and then they pretend there’s a vote in the General Assembly, which is basically the Parliament of the UN, but there’s only one candidate up for votes. So it’s not a real vote. But we said: let’s change this. Let’s make this a presidential campaign. I’ll run. If other people want to run, please go for it. I’ll run and try to mobilise as many people as possible on the streets, online, to challenge the system.
You never know, countries might listen and might actually do something different. The system is untenable. We need someone that represents the people, that represents the world, and not just five countries’ interests, in order to have the legitimacy and credibility to take action, reform the UN and tackle those challenges. In the process, because you can’t put all of your eggs in one basket, we’re doing something else: I’m crowdsourcing political priorities and programmes from across the world to bring to the UN. So even if I fail, which is likely, and I’ll go to the next UN Secretary-General (hopefully a woman, it’s been eighty years of men) and say “look, I haven’t been elected by the people of the world, but this is what they want”. At least this gives you the legitimacy to be able to act on those threats and be able to move the UN a bit forward. So, that’s what I’m doing! It’s a very weird thing because it doesn’t exist, trying to invent a global political race, but it’s fun!
How Atlas has created positive change
Sophie: You already talked a little bit about Atlas, the global movement that you co-founded, which strives to unite humanity, in your words, beyond the borders that are established on the maps. Kind of like, ideally, a global political party to tackle, like you said, the global problems that require global solutions like climate change but also income inequality, for example. So concretely, could you explain us how do you make that happen? Could you give a few examples of the problems that you have had a positive effect on?
Colombe: We launched Atlas in 2020, two weeks before the pandemic, actually. In our opening paper, we said if there’s ever an alien invasion or a pandemic, it will become clear that we need a global political movement. Two weeks later, there was a pandemic. We launched Atlas as an advocacy movement, not as a political organisation, because I’ve done politics in Europe before. I co-founded Volt and they’ve understood a bit how to mobilise people across borders in Europe. I had no idea how to do so across the world, nor if it was possible and if people wanted it, right? I knew very little outside of Europe snd I don’t pretend I know much more now, but at least I understand what I don’t know. So, we started as an advocacy organisation for three years. We did a lot of campaigns on democracy, climate, access to vaccines, physical justice, and so on, with the idea of mobilising people on all continents with different methodologies, building a movement and impacting change, obviously, and understanding what works and what doesn’t work, and creating a political philosophy that we built over those few years.
We had way more defeats than successes, way more failures than successes, but we had a couple of things that I think impacted a bit of change. At the beginning of the pandemic, for example, it became very clear that rich countries were going to be hoarding vaccines; they do that every single time around. There was a hope that it wouldn’t be the case because after a previous risk of pandemic, we created something called the Infleunza Preparedness Framework, whereas for any influenza we would have to share vaccines, tech, et cetera, well COVID wasn’t one of those: it didn’t qualify as an influenza, so it was clear that a few countries were going to hold vaccines and the rest of the world was going to wait for years, way more people were going to die, and it was going to backfire because strains were going to come back. Exactly what happened. So we said: we know it’s too late to be able to change this and what happened. What we can try to do is we can try to put up a first barrier of defence for different countries. So, to ensure that health workers, which is less than 1% of the global population, are protected because they are our first line of defence, because it’s the right thing to do, because they need to be able to treat patients, because they need to be able to be safe.
We did a campaign to have the World Health Assembly (basically the Parliament of the World Health Organisation, which is like a health ministry at the global level) accept to distribute vaccines to all health workers regardless of their nationalities, at the same time, across the world. It was successful in the sense that the chief of this organisation acknowledged it, said it was good, agreed to it. It didn’t happen after, so to some extent we had a success to pass the message that equity needed to happen. The WHO, I think, tried its best to do it. Member States and and a few countries hoarded vaccines too fast with that framework in place to push them not to do it.
Another example is that we created coalitions of opposition leaders in authoritarian countries, people that work for democracy in dictatorships, to push them to act together when dealing with dictatorship. Dictatorships love to stick together. I’m sure people have seen Russia and North Korea becoming best friends suddenly, so that North Korea can provide weapons to Russia and Russia have advantages in North Korea. Same with China and Myanmar. And so they love to go together and they do it really well. In democracies, it’s the strength of democracy, we love to disagree on every single thing, which is good, but when you’re dealing with authoritarian countries, you need to be able to coordinate sanctions, responses and so on. SO, we created coalitions of very influential opposition leaders to call for closer collaborations and some of the ideas like the D-10 for democracy, it actually made wave and was picked up by some global organisations.
And one last that I can mention, then again please bear in mind that most of the others were failures, is that we organised a boycott of Russia’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council. So, the UN Security Council has a rotating pregnancy and Russia, on April 1st last year, became the President of the UN Security Council… a country that is invading another one… We acted so that it wouldn’t be able to pass measures. We did lots of other weird stuff and and campaigns and so on.
We need all countries to come together. We need a forum where we accept to some extent to work with dictatorships. This means that it can't be purely democratic because we need a way to talk to China, however much I dislike this idea, to be able to solve climate change. It's needed.
Reforming the United Nations... Where do we start?
Sophie: Fantastic. The awareness-raising is in itself such a huge accomplishment, and it’s always the first steps towards action. So I think this is notable and congrats on that! I love the idea of practising democracy at the global level. As you mentioned already, it’s clear that the United Nations is very far from being the perfect site to do that but it is the most tangible institution that there is right now for global governance, so the structures and the rules in place for cooperation at the scale of the planet. So how do you find balance between preserving what works and reforming what doesn’t work? Could you share a few examples of what you would keep and what you would completely change in the UN system?
Colombe: So, I’m speaking in my name, not in Atlas’ name, because my view on this changes every single day based on the news. I would love to have a global democratic governance, one where we both where we are represented and so on. I have a feeling that the UN is not always the place for this and not necessarily should be the place for this every single time. So, what I mean is we might need different forums for different purposes.
Consider that 40% of the world lives in dictatorships but we need those countries to be able to tackle climate change. We need all countries to come together. We need a forum where we accept to some extent to work with dictatorships. This means that it can’t be purely democratic because we need a way to talk to China, however much I dislike this idea, to be able to solve climate change. It’s needed, right? Or to be able to regulate AI, we actually need to work together to do this. There are other challenges where we should work as democracies for democracies, but I think some of the global challenges need to be dealt with together, including countries that we deeply disagree with on basically every single value. To some extent, I think is the strength of the UN. It’s a miracle that it still exists at a time where we are so polarised across the world. It’s the strength of the UN to be this convening power.
So, I don’t know if I would make everything fully democratic. I personally really want a global democratic system of governance. I think this might be a parallel one. I think we might have a few systems of governance and one might be made of all democratic countries on Earth that want global democracy, that want global representation. You could think of models like the African Union, the European Union, to give countries advantages to join this, whether it’s free movement or whatever. You could think of different elements to incentivise this. This might be a global democratic model, on the side, we need a platform that represents all countries. It doesn’t mean that I would keep the UN as it is, because I think it’s unable to do its job.
Just like before the Second World War, we used to have a previous version of the UN that was the League of Nations that died. It was destroyed. It didn’t manage to avoid the Second World War. Right now, the UN is failing to avoid most wars. It has an impossible task. I’m not pretending it’s easy, but it’s failing to do so. Some of this is due to its structure, to its lack of competences and so on. So, this, I would definitely change. First thing, I would abolish the veto power. I find it insane to govern by veto. It’s not a thing. You govern by majority, by qualified majority, not by veto. You don’t have a few countries, especially when it’s only five versus the total number of countries, which is 193, that can veto anything. It’s completely… it can’t happen. So we’d abolish this. We also need an executive body, and we can elect that one (by “we” I mean also authoritarian countries). We can think of different models, but I would have something that actually represents the world and that enables decisions to be made: it doesn’t doesn’t work by veto. That’s the first thing I would change.
I would change a lot more things. I would actually enable global taxation. How can a global body like the UN have power if it can’t even raise its own funds, if it’s dependent on Member States agreeing to what it does, it’s impossible! You know, we have global companies (think of Amazon, Meta) and the fact that they barely pay taxes… they should pay them. They operate across borders but we can actually have a global taxation system with a global redistribution. This would give the UN enough power to be able to change a lot of things, to be able to finance a climate transition, to be able to do a lot. We need to give it the proper competences, budget, and legitimacy through reform, to be able to do so.
Inclusivity and representation in global politics
Sophie: Absolutely. There is clearly a lot of work out there, but it’s true what you say that clearly we have some global problems and there are different views across the world about the best way of going about this and what is the best solution to resolve a certain problem. So what’s the best angle? What’s the best approach? So at Atlas, how do you decide on the policy solutions you put forward? How do you ensure that they are inclusive and representative of diverse interests and concerns? What would be your advice to empower people to be heard in global politics, perhaps in spaces where they feel like they aren’t being heard?
Colombe: Let me start with the last part. I think people are not heard because they can’t be heard. So I don’t have an advice to be heard because there’s no structure. I think that’s fake structures to make people feel like they have a voice. If you look at the climate conferences, you know, we always have great speeches by incredible activists that I really respect. This does not mean they’re heard. They are given a stage and then countries go into a closed room and make decisions without involving people that are most impacted, affected, or that work on this. So, I don’t think right now there’s a stage to be heard on the global level. NGOs do listen to people. Political movements do listen. But I think the structures don’t enable this at all. There’s no petition mechanism. That’s why we’re transitioning from an activism movement to a political one. There’s no way to actually be heard by the UN. Sometimes, by luck, they pay a bit of attention, but they don’t have to and not if it actually disturbs them.
So, I don’t have advice on how to be heard at the global level because it does not exist. I have advice to get power so that we change the global level, so that it’s possible. I don’t believe right now that any of the initiatives to hear different groups are valid from the United Nations. You now have a UN Youth Envoy and I think it’s a great thing but if they don’t have the decision making power, if there’s no way for the youth of the world to elect this person and to be represented, what is this changing? It’s better to have them than not to have them, but what does it actually do? Nothing. Young people are still more unemployed in Europe, have more difficulties in buying housing than before… so it doesn’t actually change anything.
So, how do we make decisions? We are political movement, so we have our own agenda. We don’t pretend to represent everyone. We’re very progressive. We don’t represent conservative audiences. If they want a global political movement, they should build their own. We should have a global political space with parties that disagree. We’re very progressive, we won’t be for anyone who is anti LGBT rights or whatever. That’s not the place for you. However, we have certain guiding values to enable us to make policies that represent the interests of progressive people across the world.
The three main pillars are: equity, well-being, and freedom;
- Equity: We strive for equity of individuals, groups, nations and we don’t think any country is more important. We need to readdress historical inequities democratically, but also in terms of power, in terms of money.
- Well-being: Our policies ensure our well-being, which means that of the planet, of communities, of countries, of individuals.
- Freeedom: We don’t stand with authoritarian countries. We believe in individual rights, collective rights, et cetera.
Those are our guiding principles. Then, we have a political philosophy called the philosophy of unity that we derive policies from. How do we create them? We have teams of volunteers that work on those policies. We actually have a summit in three weeks. It’s coming up pretty fast and we’ll vote on those policies and then we’ll disagree and we’ll pass amendments and we’ll vote again until we can come to some sort of agreement.
We strive to involve all the countries we have in making those policies and to listen to people that are the most impacted or the most vulnerable when we talk about a policy, first. However, nothing is bulletproof or perfect. We get better as we go The overall thinking is we’re a global movements at the global level, all of our volunteers vote and work together on policies that make sense for the world and then we decline them and local issues remain local and people deal with them however they want. The idea is: let’s try to have a way forward for the world.
I would love to be able to focus on how we can all have access to incredible public services, how we can work less and have more leisure, how we can do all of this. I would love my focus to be this, but the truth is, you have so many massive challenges that are going untackled because they are difficult, because they are global, and because they require long-term political vision.
The Survival Bill
Sophie: Sounds good. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fruitful discussions you’re gonna have. Especially at the moment, I’m sure there’s a lot to talk about. In your political programme, which that caught my eye, you called it the survival bill because you are based on the idea that you need to save humanity’s survival and that our survival right now, as human beings, is at risk. What made you decide on this title and what are some of the benefits and inconveniences of framing your goals in this way and focusing on survival? And have you thought of anything else when you were looking for a title?
Colombe: We’re not very creative when it comes to branding. So, since we’re dealing with survival issues, we were just like “oh, survival bill. yeah, that works”. I’m not going to pretend it was more complicated than that. I’m running for UN Secretary General not because the system is working well and or because I want that power, but because right now, our survival is threatened by those issues and by the fact that the UN is not managing to deal with them. Climate is the easiest example. It’s not the only one. We are hitting a wall very, very fast. The UN climate chief said we have less than two years to change the tide and and our survival is at risk.
We’re not some type of extreme right wing conspiracies that will tell you that you need to be in bunkers, but our survival is at risk. Poverty, growing inequalities, put parts of humanity’s survival at risk. People are dying every single day because of those challenges. So, I would love to be able to focus on the more positive messages. I’m actually pretty optimistic person despite the title of this programme. I would love to be able to focus on how we can all have access to incredible public services, how we can work less and have more leisure, how we can do all of this. I would love my focus to be this, but the truth is, you have so many massive challenges that are going untackled because they are difficult, because they are global, and because they require long-term political vision. You don’t win on the short term with any of those. It requires sacrifices, it requires honesty, and difficult decisions.
When you have all of those threats, for me it feels a bit ridiculous to focus on the smaller things at the global level. Not that we shouldn’t improve public services, we definitely need to, but too often in political discussions we move away from the very big threats the world is facing. I talked about climate, but we can talk about wars. The aim of the United Nations is to ensure peace and security, yet we have so many ongoing wars where you have key international actors providing weapons. Gaza is the perfect example and and there is no end in sight. So instead of speaking about some ideal changes to make us all better, we need to focus on the very big survival threats. It’s often a bit an anxiety-giving, and it’s often a bit less sexy than focusing on well-being and so on, but I think it’s what the UN is failing to do, and I think this is where you actually need political engagements.
Learning from democracies around the world
Sophie: Right. So, a very bold and pragmatic approach, I see. I share a lot of your passion that you are showing right now for protecting democracy and also promoting it at the global level. One dilemma that I have encountered in doing that is the tension between protecting democracy as a decision making procedure and as a set of ideals and values. So, these minimalist and maximalist democratic understandings. How do you deal with that? How should we deal with the possibility that democratic procedures may lead to ideas and policies which threaten democracy itself? I think that we have seen now this situation in many cases, at the national level.
Colombe: I think we think of democracy a lot as an end product, as a finished product. We think of democracy as this established thing that exists and that we’re unhappy with, often, because it doesn’t work well, because our problems are not getting fixed. Again, I’m French and the French President called legislative elections with a two weeks and 1/2 timeline for parties to be able to run, a week to submit candidates, and so on. It’s insane! It’s not democratic in itself. People are unhappy with the decisions and unhappy with the system. So, we feel that democracy doesn’t work. But I see democracy a bit differently.
I don’t think democracy is an established system. If you go around the world, democracy is practised in many, many different ways. It can be very individualistic, it can be very community-driven, and it can be by consensus, or by ensuring that no minority voice is forgotten. There’s a lot of ways of practising democracy that lead to drastically different results. So, I don’t think there’s one system that works, and I don’t think there’s necessarily one democratic system that works everywhere. Europe, our political system, for example, hasn’t delivered, for a lot of people. Our generation is the first one that is poorer than the parents and people struggle every single day. Again, I’m very progressive, but when I struggle to pay rent, that’s my top priority and I’m not justifying certain political choices because I think if you vote for a racist, xenophobic movement, you’re putting your life over other people’s and that’s never justifiable.
The harsh realities remain the same. I think we blame democracy for this. Often, we think that a strong man would solve this, without thinking that democracy can actually be improved, that if it’s not delivering, we should change it. There’s lots of examples of this happening. If you look at Taiwan, Taiwan actually went through something called the Sunflower Revolution. There was a group of hackers who occupied the Parliament. They were very unhappy with the democratic procedures and now it’s way more participative, digital. They completely changed the way they practice democracy on hot topics and they managed to arrive at insane levels of consensus on some of the hottest conversations that society can see. I’m not saying it’s bulletproof or perfect. Taiwan is a hyper polarised society and but we can maybe learn something from this in order to do democracy better across the world.
That’s where I see the the strength of the global level. None of us are special individuals. We love to think our country is very different. Every time I work with volunteers in different countries, and I often do the same, I hear “No, no, no, no, you don’t understand. This is super different from what happens there because…”. And every time I have this conversation, it’s not. It’s the same thing. It’s the same (more or less) problem, but the strength we have is we have hundreds of countries that have gone through this, hundreds of communities that have gone through this. So if we’d able to look at one another and be like “oh, OK, this happened here, maybe I could actually learn and use some of the playbooks to be able to solve this issue…”.
In France, we’re seeing this with the Front Populaire. After President Macron said he would dissolve the National Assembly and call elections within two weeks, left-leaning parties built a Popular Front. Great idea! This was already done in India in this year’s presidential elections. That meant that the current leaders of the government had a harder time in forming a government. If were able to look a bit at others’ strategies, we would be able to prevent democratic backsliding and to improve enough so that people have faith in democracy.
My point is that a lot of democracies actually have very big flaws and people are very right to be angry about it. Democracies are often technocracies [governance by technical experts]. It’s often the same people we see in politics because you need money, you need connections, you need free time. The structures and the systems are not made to be heard. As a result, people are left behind and it never really changes. But we can actually learn on how to change those structures to ensure that democracies are better, more resilient, and more innovative.
It's often the same people we see in politics because you need money, you need connections, you need free time. The structures and the systems are not made to be heard.
The future of global society
Sophie: Totally, I share that assessment and I think that there is a lot of hope, especially with how technology has evolved recently. I think that there is a source of hope to better listen to each other and to learn from each other. So, now that we’re reaching towards the end of of this interview, I wanted to end on a positive note and ask you: imagine that we are in the year 2084, most of your political goals have been met and the dramatic consequences of climate change have been averted. What would the world look like? In other words, in your wildest dreams, how does global society exist?
Colombe: In a world where our survival threats would no longer exist (I assume we would have new ones), we would actually have a global democratic governance. Amazon is taxed where it operates and we have better public services as a result. AI serves humanity wonderfully and so on and so forth. I think we can actually picture a society that is much more equitable, where all individuals have access to power, have access to wealth, any individual can become a head of state, can live with financial security. I think we would live in a society where the wounds of the past have been healed.
We talk about global societies – they exist – but I don’t think we can be united and I don’t think we can work as one unless we heal the wounds of the past. A lot of countries, including mine, have committed horrible colonial crimes, but because they are powerful, because they are leading the global agenda, have never been held accountable. So, how can you ask people to suddenly work together, hand in hand? The financial system is still being held hostage by past crimes, financial structures, and so on. How can you do so? We’d be actually able to move forward in a united way and, as a result, reap the benefits that come from a global society.
We could all have access to universal basic income from fair taxation and redistribution across the world. We’d get to not only live in a competitive manner, but certainly be able to think about what fulfils us, about how we may contribute to the world, to our society. We’d live more in adequation with our means, with nature, with our planet. We’d live in peace, and I don’t just mean the absence of war, but where poverty does not exist. How can you say you live in a peaceful society if people are dying on the street? It’s not peaceful. I imagine this as a society of high exchanges, collaboration, and deeply meaningful community relations that are possible and with all of the new set of challenges that will exist with such a society, but where we don’t have to worry every single day about whether war is going to happen, whether people are dying because of the lack of means when we have enough resources.
I don’t know if you ever saw this TikTok video of a guy pretending to interview planet Earth to join the Federation of Planets or something like this. I’ll send it to you. It’s hilarious. It’s basically a world where you have a lot of planets that are in a federation and planet Earth really wants to join the federation and the guy is like “OK, so, have you explored other planets? No. Not even Mars. But it’s right next door! OK, but at least you don’t have poverty, right?” And he’s like ”Why? Why do you have poverty? You don’t have enough food? You don’t have enough water?”. And Earth says “No… It’s because of administration. We don’t redistribut.” So, people die because of administration… It shows the absurdity of our system where you live in a world of plenty, but you don’t manage to do the basics so that people don’t, literally, die because of malnutrition, when we have enough food and money. So, once we have achieved this, we can fight all of the rest. My point is, let’s get this under control before we fight about all of the rest.
Sources of inspiration
Sophie: Clearly, improving the efficiency of allocation of resources is definitely a big one that, I think like you said, is intersectional. Once that is resolved, the rest sort naturally follows. I can imagine that being a political activist like yourself requires a lot of positivity, hope, and courage. So what gives you hope? What are your favourite sources of inspiration and what helps you to keep going? If you could recommend maybe a book, a movie, or a podcast, what would it be?
Colombe: Certainly a lot of people say you need hope to move forward. I mainly operate out of anger. I don’t have the time. It’s because I’m very angry at the system that I do that. If I was happy, if I thought everything was great and had so much hope, why would I get active? I think the system is insane. I think it’s completely abnormal and it gets the hell out of me that we accept that over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and still provide weapons. I find this insane and that is what gives me energy because I think unless we do something, more people will die and that is the same with a lot of those challenges. The fact that, again, Amazon doesn’t pay its taxes where it operates, when people die of poverty… drives me insane, it drives me nuts.
We have the capacity to do something about it. For a lot of those challenges, it seems very difficult, but we actually have all of the solutions or most of them, even for climate, we have all of the tech and all of the money to be able to solve all of those challenges. We just miss the political will. The fact that we have all the solutions give me hope, but I’m angry as hell because the politicians are so short sighted that they’re not solving those issues.
On a bit of a less angry note, the one thing I would say that gives me hope is seeing people all over the world being willing to do the hard work. Atlas is a volunteer-fueled and powered movement and seeing people from literally all over the world speaking different languages, going through their own hardships, being willing to take the time and the energy and to work for change… I find it incredibly beautiful.
For example, right now in Kenya, there are protests that have been deadly: the government has used an insane amount of force and killed, abducted, arrested people. Our volunteers are on the streets and yet find time to join forces to try to work for global change. And this, I mean, it’s not even a hope. I mean, I find them absolutely incredible.
How to join the Atlas movement?
Sophie: Fantastic. Well, it’s been a wonderful opportunity to chat with you and to learn more about what you’re doing in your vision for global governance and politics on the global level. I have one last question. If people are interested in joining Atlas and in joining that movement that you are driving forward, what can they do? Where can they find you?
Colombe: It’s atlasmovement.org and you’re able to volunteer, donate, and become a member. Those are the three main things. What volunteer means is someone over the world can bring this work forward, run for elections, and administer the teams. Donations start at $3 to $10.00 a month. That’s literally what finances us. And by being a member you have voting rights on our policy strategies, et cetera. So those are the three main ways of getting involved. We also host extremely regular events, including our Summit in July that you’d be able to attend. And finally, vote for me, endorse me for United Nations Secretary General. It’s at unite4survival.org.
Interview led and written by Sophie L. VĂ©riter
