Rewriting the Rules: Because What Seems Impossible Is Actually Possible

A story about the UN Charter clause no one has ever used, the common ground hiding beneath our deepest differences, and why refusing to stop dreaming might be the most defiant act left.

The UN Charter was written in 1945 — before the internet, before climate science, before most of the world had a seat at the table. One third of the world was still colonized when those rules were drafted. And buried inside them is a clause that has never once been used: a mechanism to review and update the Charter itself.

Heba Aly spent a decade reporting from conflict zones, then led one of the world's foremost humanitarian newsrooms. And then she decided that bearing witness wasn't enough. This conversation follows that turning point. It's about Article 109, the untouched clause that could open a global conversation about new rules for a new world.

But underneath that, it's about something quieter and more universal: how we find common ground when everything feels intractable.

Heba tells a story in this episode about two people fighting over an orange, each certain they want the same thing — only to discover they each needed a different part of it. That story is, in many ways, the whole method. Whether you are mediating between nations or trying to understand why your neighbour voted differently than you did, the path forward starts the same way: go one layer deeper. Beneath the position is an interest. Beneath the interest is usually a fear. And beneath the fear — almost always — is something we share.

She also shares what she has learned about change: that it requires three things to be true at once — dissatisfaction with what exists, a shared vision for what could be, and belief that a path forward is real. And that even inside the largest bureaucracies in the world, it is a handful of individual human beings, willing to commit and believe, who carry a movement through.

The work is long. The odds feel steep. And somewhere in a Pacific island going underwater, or a city living under bombing the Security Council cannot stop, someone is waiting for the rules to catch up. This episode is for everyone who hasn't given up on imagining otherwise.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

Article 109 Movement: article109.org

UN Charter, un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

👤 ABOUT THE GUEST

Heba Aly is an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and advocate for global governance reform. After a decade reporting from conflict zones and years leading The New Humanitarian, she became Director of Article 109 — a growing international movement backed by former heads of state working to activate an untouched clause in the UN Charter and make the world's most important institution fit for the world we actually live in.

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The Hummingbird Collective is co-produced by the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, supported through Sarah Noble's participation in the Youth for Peace: UNESCO Intercultural Leadership Programme (2025–2026). Guests speak from their own experience and perspective, which may not reflect the views of the show or its partners.

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