The Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit will be held by The University of Oxford and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Oxford from 4th to 7th June 2025. The summit seeks to place climate justice and human rights at the heart of global climate action by engaging activists and youth as pivotal agents of change. As part of this initiative, the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and Somerville College will host a special event exploring the impact of climate change in conflict zones, with a particular focus on firsthand accounts from South Asia, Middle East and North Africa. The event is titled, In Between Climate Chaos and War and it will be held on 6th June 2025, Friday at the Flora Anderson Hall, Somerville College OX2 6HD.
Our platform will deliberately shift from the rhetoric of ‘climate change’ to confront the stark reality of ‘climate chaos‘—acknowledging that we face a difficult transition through an unprecedented turbulence that defies conventional control.
We will examine how climate chaos interweaves with human rights in our world’s most vulnerable spaces. We turn our scholarly attention to regions where environmental devastation compounds human conflict—from Afghanistan to recently freed Syria —recognizing that climate chaos acts as both a catalyst and amplifier of human suffering in these fragile contexts.
The event will feature three speakers who will bring their lived experience and expertise in addressing how climate chaos manifests itself in geopolitically fragile regions.
Speakers:
1. Zodiac Maslin-Hahn, Director, Programme Development – Impact and Learning, Afghan Aid
Zodiac is a programme development specialist with a Master of Social Science degree in Peace and Conflict Research. She has worked in relief and development in several conflict-affected countries in project management, monitoring, and research roles. Zodiac has been with Afghanaid since 2015, and has led the development of projects for our institutional donors including FCDO, the EU, UN agencies, SDC, and the World Bank. She says, “It is a privilege to work with colleagues who are so dedicated to delivering high quality programmes. Afghanaid’s commitment to innovation, impact measurement, and learning enables our department to develop new projects that build on past work, reflect the particular needs of the communities in which we work, and adapt to the evolving context in Afghanistan.
2. Dr Ammar Azouz, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford
Ammar is a Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is the Principal Investigator of Slow Violence and the City, a research project that examines the impact of violence on the built environment at the time of war and peace. Azzouz studied architecture in the city of Homs, Syria, where he was born and raised. Since the start of the Syrian Revolution, over half of the neighbourhoods of Homs has been destroyed. In 2011, he moved to the UK to complete his postgraduate studies and received his PhD from the University of Bath. Azzouz’s first book, Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria (Bloomsbury, 2023), offers fresh insights into the role of the architects during time of war. It explores how architecture is contested and weaponised during years of conflicts, and how the future reconstruction of cities should mirror the wants and needs of local communities. He visited Syria in 2025, after fourteen years and brings a perspective of how the nation recovers from a brutal regime’s rule and a region where world’s most powerful countries fight a proxy war.
3. Omnia Ibrahim Hafez El Omrani, Candidate for Master’s in Public Policy, University of Oxford
Omnia is an Egyptian medical doctor with nine years of experience working on the intersection of climate change and health. She served as the first official Youth Envoy for the UN Climate Summit (COP27) to the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, facilitating the participation of thousands of youth in climate negotiations, and was then appointed as the Health Envoy for COP28 UAE, where she co-chaired the first Ministerial on Climate and Health. Omnia has been a Climate and Health Policy Fellow at the Climate Cares Centre at Imperial College London, focusing on climate and mental health. She co-leads the Equity Group of the Lancet Commission on Viral Spillover Prevention and serves on two other Lancet Commissions. ‘Apolitical’ named Omnia one of 50 Gender Equality Gamechangers of 2024, and she was selected as the 2023 Women of the Future, 50 Rising Stars in ESG. Fast Company ME recognized Omnia as one of 35 Most Creative People in Business 2023. She has published 30 research papers and serves on advisory boards with philanthropies and policy. Omnia is a Reuben-Blavatnik scholar.
