Maria Ressa speaks at One Young World Summit 2026 in South Africa

Detailed summary

'Impunity can end. We can hold power to account,' the Nobel Peace Prize laureate tells young people from over 190 countries.

Rappler CEO and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa tells 2,000 One Young World Summit delegates about the importance of speaking truth to power, how to resist the two dictators of our world, and how to fight the algorithms and platforms that threaten to strip us of our agency.

Ressa spoke during the summit’s opening ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa, on November 3, 2026. The event, gathering young leaders from over 190 countries, concluded on November 6.

Plainclothes officers walk in to arrest me. One of our reporters, 24-year-old Aika Rey, raises her phone and begins livestreaming my arrest.

Or Pia Ranada – Pia, where are you? Bullied by our dictator, her mic turned off while asking a question. Her voice was shaking. But she kept asking.

That’s what courage looks like. Not the absence of fear. The decision that something matters more.

At Rappler, we were drowning in online attacks. We couldn’t defeat a machinery of lies. It was like playing whack-a-mole. So we stepped out of the virtual line of fire and into the real world. We brought newsrooms together with teachers, churches, students, lawyers, and built communities of action. IRL.

We took facts off the screen and put them into relationships. Because one of the best ways to reclaim our humanity is to be human: to meet people, walk with them, and hold their hands.

In Serbia, students took their movement from their phones into town squares. They cycled across their country, meeting neighbors face to face. Nine days ago, that movement won a parliamentary election.

In Brazil, I felt the desperation – which pushed people into the real world, the largest turnout in 2 decades. When buses were missing on election day, people picked up their car keys and drove their neighbors to the polls. In Hungary, the man who ended 16 years of Orban’s rule shook people’s hands – some of them twice!

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