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Abolition of Foreignness Paper

What is Foreignness

Human rights and Foreignness

Death at the Border

The Suffering of Children

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Faith and Foreignness

Individual Voices

Real Earth: Imaginary Borders

For more than 200 years people around the world have worked for the achievement of human dignity and human equality.

First abolitionists, slaves and former slaves worked to bring an end to the slave trade and slavery.  Women and men struggled to achieve equality for women.  Workers sought dignity in the work place.  Racial minorities and those who believe 'we are all born equal' sought an end to racism.  Colonial populations sought the right to determine their own destiny.  Struggles such as these not only advanced human rights:  they changed the way people related each other - belief in inequality was replaced with acceptance of equal rights.

In 1948, in the Universal Declaration of Human of Rights a global consensus was established of the minimum values of world society:  the minimum human dignity that every member of the human family is entitled to.

Refugee Camp in Darfur

Yet, in the twenty-first century, after 60 years of work to achieve the goals of the Declaration, ten million children under the age of five die each year from largely preventable causes.  In some countries 20% of children die before they reach the age of five.

Thousands of people fleeing poverty, war or deprivation die trying to cross international borders in defiance of laws making such crossing illegal.

67 million people live as refugees or internally displaced people as a result of persecution, war, poverty or other causes.

One billion people live in abject poverty.

Believing that human beings are "foreigners" makes such profound human rights violations possible. 

Like earlier concepts that maintained profound inequality and suffering abolishing foreignness will remove a critical barrier preventing the attainment of a world in which all human beings have freedom, equality and dignity.

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OPEN THE BORDERS NEWS FEED

Fri, Aug 2010 07:00:00 GMT

(BRUSSELS) - France has breached laws of the European Union by deporting hundreds of Roma migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, the Socialist bloc of the European parliament said on Thursday."

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:00:00 GMT

West Australian: "An asylum seeker has died after collapsing at re-opened Curtin detention centre in WA's north-west over the weekend."

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

BBC: "In some ways it's cheap vote-getting. There is this cycle of kind of nativist hysteria that is very profitable for politicians. Nothing gets votes like the politics of fear."

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

VOA: A U.S. judge Wednesday blocked controversial parts of an Arizona law aimed at curbing illegal immigration, one day before the law goes into effect.

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Japan Times Online: The ruling Democratic Party of Japan advocates the introduction of foreigner suffrage but faces strong opposition.

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Asahi: The point in question is whether to grant permanent foreign residents the right to vote in local elections.

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

The Hindu: Are hunger and starvation acceptable any longer? Despite the campaign for the Right to Food Act which pinpoints several criteria as basic needs, poverty is widespread. A severe moral deficit is an underlying factor, says PRAHALAD SINGH

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

CIS: Classical liberals should support the free movement of people ... It seems a bit odd but when we talk about immigration, we rarely talk about how good it is for immigrants themselves.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Huffington Post: In Zugu, a small village in Ghana, most of the children are hungry most of the time.

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Miami Herald:Religious leaders and lawmakers traded Scripture passages Wednesday at a congressional hearing on whether there's an ethical imperative to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

States should not follow Arizona's lead and enact strict new Immigration laws because ridding the country of illegal immigrants is the federal government's job, the director of the nation's Immigration enforcement agency said Tuesday.

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Since 2000 at least 909 asylum seekers and irregular entrants have lost their lives in attempting to enter Australia or while in detention.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

In a policy announcement echoing the discredited ‘Pacific solution’ of the previous Liberal Government, the new Australian government has decided to seek to detain asylum seekers in a ‘regional processing centre’ in East Timor.

Mon, 26 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right to leave any country. Increasingly countries are cooperating to violate this human rights by preventing aslyum seekers and others from leaving a country to seek refuge in another country.

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMT

NBC NEWS: The government of Mexico today formally joined a lawsuit in federal court challenging Arizona's new immigration law.

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Columbia Spectator: Foreignness is a meaningless concept. It’s time that we accept that and dump the term into the dustbin of history.

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

VOA: Nations are staging special events to mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force on November 20, 1989.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

In recent days Germans and those affected by the Cold War are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some 200 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. On recent figures 13250 have died seeking to cross the “walls” surrounding Fortress Europe.

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The Age: Business leaders call for placing people movements on political agenda and for open borders.

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Japan Times Online: Enacting laws to allow permanent foreign residents to vote in local-level elections may be difficult in the near future and more debate is needed to form a nonpartisan consensus in the Diet, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Thursday.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first Chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Her work, with her colleagues, led to the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The following, according to her son, is a prayer that she said every night.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Some countries obsess about ‘who we are’. The obsession becomes more intense, the more people with different coloured skins, different accents, diffent cultures become part of day to day life. In an age of migration “we” can become very confusing. Who can “we” be, if quite obviously “us” includes “them”.

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Surely something as universally true as science could not have borders? Not in the twenty-first century. Not in the age of the internet.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Unfortunately the facts and statements show the truth of the tragedy of the deaths of the Eritreans at sea. It is no longer an issue of left or right, of different policies concerning illegal immigration. We are facing a tragedy which was predicted, caused by immoral and unjust laws contrary to international rights which have the effect of stopping rescue at sea.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

U.S. immigration officials say they have discovered the records of 10 previously unreported deaths of immigrants detained in U.S. custody since 2003.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

ABC News - "Minister for Immigration Chris Evans says the data-sharing arrangements will not affect privacy laws. "It's not being collected on Australian citizens, it's being collected on third country nationals," he said."

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year in the United States represents a violation of human rights, Amnesty International USA said in a report on Wednesday.

Mon, 4 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(NY Times - Nina Bernstein) - Not until March 20, in response to a new request by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, did the agency release an internal e-mail message acknowledging that the death had been overlooked. It issued a corrected list that now includes him — his first and last names transposed — among 90 people who died in immigration custody between Oct. 7, 2003, and Feb. 7, 2009.

Mon, 4 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(CBC News CA - Brian Stewart) - It says a great deal about the general instability of our age that the world can misplace entire crises in the shock of the latest alarms.

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(Business Mirror) - Two perennial problems haunt and hurt the health-care system in the Philippines: its shortage of doctors, and the concentration of health professionals in urban areas. For a country that exports doctors and nurses, the Philippines suffers from a low 1:15,000 doctor-to-population ratio, more than double the ideal 1:6,000 and a far cry from the US ratio of 1:150.

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(Relief Web) - Even as the world is transfixed by the global economic meltdown, it is faced with another, almost forgotten crisis, "a terrible tide of increasing hunger."

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(AP) - SAN ANTONIO: At least 200 immigrants nationwide face deportation under what's become known as the "widow's penalty," a federal policy ordering widows and widowers out of the country if their U.S. citizen spouse dies before their immigration application is approved.

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(BBC) - The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran, says the world may be reaching a point where the global system can no longer cope with the number of hungry people.

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Laurel, US (AP) - For a long time, Howard workers were poor blacks and whites in this town of 18,000, where an estimated 30 percent of the population lives in poverty. But in the past few years, immigrants poured across the Mexican border, eagerly applying for work on the Howard line and not complaining about long hours or menial labor.

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Bangkok, Thailand (AP) - Thailand offered Saturday to host a regional conference to prevent the mass migration — and resulting suffering — of refugees after the Thai navy was accused of brutally mistreating boat people from Bangladesh.

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - Hundreds of people are missing and feared dead after boats carrying about 400 African migrants capsized Saturday near Yemen, a U.N. official said.

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

London (REUTERS) - The human eye can help doctors understand how an acute form of malaria attacks the brain, researchers said on Wednesday, opening the way to new and better treatments for one of Africa's biggest killers.

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Johannesburg (VOA) - UNICEF's Annual State of the World's Children report 2009 The U.N. Children's Fund says in its latest annual report that half a million women die in childbirth and more than four million newborns are also lost each year, and that most of those deaths are preventable.

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

(Economist) – The economic slump is battering migrants. For tens of millions of people working outside their homelands, life is becoming much more precarious.

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

GENEVA (AP) – Europe should act against a growing animosity to African migrants by ensuring that people crossing the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum can land and ask for protection, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

LOS ANGELES, (LA Times) – Pro-immigration groups say comprehensive reform would allow immigrants to bolster the nation's economic well-being. Opponents say legalization would further crowd an already dwindling job market.

Thu, 23 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (MSNBC) – The story about the worsening economy in Pakistan can be seen in the plight of children at the Edhi Welfare Center in Karachi – it has meant more children being dropped off.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

PARIS: In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe's own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Italy's only black MP has warned of growing racism after a surge in attacks on immigrants across the country.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

(Cairo) - Since June 2007, Egyptian border guards have killed at least 32 African migrants trying to cross into Israel.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Instead of Western handouts, World Food Program buying local crops

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

The Elders' Mary Robinson joined Anti-poverty campaigners yesterday, to announce an astounding 116 million people nearly two percent of the world's population mobilized at events in 131 countries on October 17-19 as part of Stand Up and Take Action.

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Historians discuss the significance of the Barak Obama victory as President elect of the United States for civil rights, the defeat of racism. James Grossman, Robert O. Self, Peniel E. Joseph,Vicki L. Ruiz, Renee Romano, Michael Honey

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Twenty million jobs will disappear by the end of next year as a result of the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Food campaigners frustrated that world food hunger and starvation is being ignored while trillions found to bail out banks. Question global priorities.