"This is the moment of accountability" w/ Michael Fakhri
Makdisi Street
Bayt al Makdisi
4.9 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
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Summary
The brothers welcome back to the show Michael Fakhri (@michaelfakhri), United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to discuss the open war of starvation on Gaza, how international institutions have abjectly failed their moral and legal duties, the role of the media, and what individuals can do to hold the responsible actors to account.
Check his episode from April 2024, "Famine is never a natural occurrence"
Date of recording: Aug 26, 2025.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | governments will be made or will fail on this issue and I think politicians aren't going to do anything they don't have to do and so we have now social power we have legal victories and we're in the political moment to take the social power and the legal victories and turn them into political change, |
| 0:22.5 | this is actually the moment. This is the moment of accountability. This is the moment of holding all |
| 0:29.1 | leaders to bear. |
| 0:35.3 | Welcome everybody back to another episode of the Magdus Street podcast. |
| 0:40.3 | We're delighted to have back with us Professor Michael Fethri, who's a prominent scholar activist |
| 0:46.3 | and deeply committed to justice across the world. He's currently the UN's special rapporteur |
| 0:51.9 | on the Right to Food, but also a professor of law |
| 0:54.6 | at the University of Oregon in the United States. |
| 0:57.9 | Michael joined us in April of last year, 2024, and we'll link, we will provide the link |
| 1:03.4 | for our conversation with him last year, on the question in particular of famine within |
| 1:09.4 | the context of genocide in Gaza. |
| 1:11.6 | And though it's a great pleasure to have Michael back for his brilliance and for his commitment to justice across the world, |
| 1:19.6 | it's also quite sad and quite, it makes us all kind of angry that we have to have this conversation again about famine |
| 1:27.7 | and Gaza ongoing more than a year and a half later. |
| 1:32.1 | So Michael, with this kind of introduction, first of welcome back to the podcast, but before |
| 1:37.8 | we start to get into the question of the famine, can you just remind us again, your role |
| 1:41.9 | as a special rapporteur? |
| 1:43.4 | Can you just remind us what exactly that means within the context of the United Nations and what powers do you have and, you know, what kind of ability do you have to kind of convey all these reports that you make? |
| 1:55.1 | Thank you, Karim, and thank you everyone for having me back even under the circumstances. |
| 2:00.5 | So I'm the UN Special Reporteur |
| 2:02.9 | on the Right to Food and there are over 40 mandates on different rights and different issues and |
| 2:07.9 | different with a focus on different communities. So water, health, right, freedom of assembly. And we are |
... |
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