2015-10-10

Let's revise "freedom of movement" in the declaration of Human Rights

Reading the Saturday morning paper (Dagens Nyheter) almost always leave me at unease. The common denominator of my woes is privileged people (in particular our elected politicians) expressing opinions about who should be welcome to Sweden (and Europe for that matter) and who should not. Today the following statement bugged me a lot:

"Being poor does not qualify as a reason for asylum."

I fully understand the problematic situation that arises in our privileged bubble when hundreds of thousands of people seek asylum in a short period of time (we might have to cut back on desserts for our old).  Among these people, there is a fair share of opportunists not qualifying for asylum. They come here because of other reasons, often economical, looking for a better life. What human principle gives us the right to stop these people at the border? There is a lot of arguments circulating why we do. Here are a few I hear more or less every day (and my immediate answers in italic):
  • We (or our ancestors) have built this country and we have the sole right to reap rewards of our collective work.
    This is simply not true because you were just lucky you were born here. You are privileged to have had the opportunity to build this country.
  • The right to protect our borders rely on the same human rights principle as stated in Article 17.
    This argument is extremely deceptive. Applying the principle rights of individuals (and the people close to him/her) on the collective may seem appropriate at the first glance but falls on so many points. In particular because of the sheer reason we have human rights; it is there to protect the individual against abuse from the collective (e.g., majority). In fact, democracy would not work very well if these principles were not in play. Applying the same protective principles on the abuser does not make any sense.
  • We should try to help fix the problems local to the countries where these people come from.
    Yes, I agree we should strive to do more in this regard. Nonetheless, it is not really an argument for stopping people at our own borders. The two does not exclude each other. We can both let people in while helping out in their countries of origin.
In reality, the following arguments would be much more appropriate:
  • We are selfish and do not want to share our fortune with anyone else.
  • We don't want to see or hear people that are too different to ourselves. We want a homogenous society with regard to heritage, culture, religion (and preferably also skin color if possible).
  • We have a system which more or less made extreme poverty extinct (for the small fraction of the world population our country represents) and does not want to see that on our streets again.

Don't try to hide your racism/xenophobia/selfishness in pretty arguments!

No, we should revise Article 13 and 14 to state freedom of movement across state borders. In particular in these days. That would be the humane thing to do. But what is the likelihood of that happening?

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