KARACHI: A 24-year-old Pakistani human rights and climate activist has been included in Time Magazine’s Women of the Year list for 2023, Dawn.com reported.

Ayisha Siddiqa, who left a memorable impression at the COP 27 conference in Egypt last year when she read out an original poem highlighting how leaders had failed their nations, joins the likes of Australian actor Cate Blanchett, American actor Angela Bassett, Somalian boxer Ramla Ali and Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad along with a host of other powerful women leaders.

Hailing from Jhang, Ms Siddiqa moved to the US as a child.

According to Time, she co-founded Polluters Out, a global youth activist coalition, in 2020 and helped launch the Fossil Free University, an activism training course.

She is now working to help set up a youth climate justice fund to correct the imbalance of resources activists have compared to the fossil fuel industry. Ms Siddiqa’s work aims to better distribute philanthropic funding to grassroots activists around the world.

As a research fellow for the Climate Litigation Accelerator project at New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, she’s also helping to create a system of support that breaks down silos between intergovernmental lead

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2023