Where some might see the figure of 7 billion as a cause of alarm, these musicians see 7 billion human hearts.

As 7 Billion Actions say on their webpage:

7 Billion Actions is connecting people and creating positive change through the universal language of music. Music has the power to break down boundaries between people. Music transcends geographical, political, economic, spiritual and ideological distances, uniting people everywhere as one human race.[1]

The lyrics of “United” captures their message:

We have to bring the world together

We have to live as one

This is the answer for the people

Who lost their loved ones from war.

This is the answer for the people

Who lost their loved ones from hunger.

We often think of human rights in terms of equality and freedom.  “United” focusses on the third great theme found in article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – what it calls ‘the spirit of brotherhood’.

Here is a video of United.

Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 23(4)

This idea is hard to argue with.  It appeals to our sense of fairness. It appears in the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other human rights treaties, as well as in international labour conventions.  Its history and elaboration is an achievement of the women’s movement.  The principle is not however limited to gender inequality.

Like other human rights principles, its realisation is a work in progress.  Country after country has entrenched the principle of equal pay for equal work in national laws. Yet on a global scale,  equal pay for equal work does not exist – whether in terms of gender or in other senses.  Such national laws do not concern themselves with wage levels ‘beyond the border’.

Should a bus driver, doctor, IT professional, shop assistant or any other worker be expected to earn less when they perform the same work simply because they happen to be performing that work in a different part of the planet?  This is the reality, even if we take into account differences in cost of living.  A bus driver in Australia earns (on a purchasing power parity basis) ten times as much as a bus driver in Peru.[1]   A doctor in the United States earns ten times as much as a doctor in Romania, again on a PPP basis.[2]  Computer programmers seem to do a little better with programmers in Peru making a quarter of what programmers in the United States make – nonetheless inequity persists.[3]

The reality of wage inequality is one that lends itself to global injustice.  Shoes bought in one part of the world for the price of an hour or two of work, will net the worker who creates it a wage that is barely sufficient for a life of dignity.

In a demonstration of the effect of variation in salaries across national boundaries, Ashenfelter and Juradja have carried out an empirical study of how affordable a Big Mac is to the worker producing it across many countries.  As they point out, we know because of the standardization of the McDonald business process and products across borders, that the work performed by these workers is virtually identical everywhere.  Thus wage variance cannot be explained away as the result of differences in the value of the work performed.

Comparing the salaries of these workers in terms of the price they pay locally for a Big Mac (an internationally standardized product) also provides a measure of purchasing power parity.

Ashenfelter and Juradja conclude:

The results of our survey indicate there are extraordinarily large differences in the wage rates of workers doing identical jobs in countries at different levels of economic development.   Loosely speaking, base wage rates – whether measured in US dollars or Big Macs – are quite similar among Western European countries, Japan and the US.   However, wage rates in these countries, are three to five times higher than in Eastern Europe,  Korea or Brazil and an order of magnitude higher than they are in China, India or Colombia. “

One use they make of their findings is to compare their findings with other measures of wage variation across countries, finding a high level of correlation.  This allows them to challenge suggestions that difference in wages across countries can be explained in terms of difference in the quality of the work being done.

In graphic terms, a McDonald’s cashier or crew member’s wages in India amount to 0.23 Big Macs per hour,  whereas in Japan the same worker makes 3.04 Big Macs per hour.

If we take into account international trade flows it becomes even more obvious that such wage disparities are a matter of global interest and concern.   Goods and services cross international boundaries.  Individuals in one country become the beneficiaries of low wages in another – or suffer exploitation in order that goods and services be provided as cheaply as possible to another part of the world.  Awareness of the conditions under which goods or services are produced does not always flow so easily although it is a matter of increasing civil society action, as so much of what is branded and sold in countries where wages are higher, is produced by workers being paid an unequal and sometimes inadequate wage in countries where wages are lower.

Organisations such as the Fair Trade Association promote ‘fair’ pricing of goods sourced from workers in developing countries, and are able to find willing consumers prepared to pay a premium for the assurance that workers and producers are receiving a ‘fair’ return – enough to live a decent life.  Notably, even such organisations do not champion the standard established by human rights instruments: equal pay for equal work.

Accepting that some workers should be paid less (in real terms) for the same work simply as the result of an accident of birth (where they live) is plainly unjust.  The more so, when this inequality contributes to widespread and chronic poverty for billions.

Image Source:  http://www.freefoto.com/preview/04-28-41/Pile-of-Money

image from geograph.org

Sometimes, there is no need for words. This, I think, is one of those times. This video says it all.

In her provocative and seminal text Inventing Human Rights, Lynn Hunt argues that human rights had to be, well, invented. The crux of Hunt’s argument about the origins of human rights is that they “could only flourish when people learned to think of others as their equals, as like them in fundamental fashion.” In other words, humans haven’t always thought of each other as equals, and they had to learn to do so at a specific point in history. We like to think of the most horrifying parts of human history, things like slavery or colonialism, as people doing ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ things—which they unquestionably were—but we tend to whitewash the fact that notions of natural inequality and even slavery are embedded in Western tradition all the way back to Aristotle, who famously claimed that some people were just innately suited to be slaves. It isn’t inherently part of human nature, Hunt implies, to imagine other beings as the same or equal.

If all this is true (and, granted, it might not be, but that’s for each of us to decide on her own), how did we learn to start thinking of each other as equals with innate human rights? Hunt argues that this only occurred in the 18^th century as the consequence of a “sentimental revolution” in Europe. She looks specifically at novels, saying that the development and proliferation of a specific genre of books that centred on the psychology of an (often female) protagonist led people to read and empathize with others, even strangers, in ways they could not have before. This led to a bevy of changes in popular European society. Historical records show that individual, regular people became more polite and less violent, or in a word, what we would call more “civilized.” As these changes occurred, the human body itself came to be imagined in a new way, as something sacred and as something that should be protected from harm. All these cultural changes were necessary, Hunt claims, for a new conception of equality and human rights to emerge with the French Revolution. As we all now, it then took a long time for ideas of equality and fraternity to expand beyond its racist origins and envelop all people regardless of the color of their skin.

That all this may be debatable is a point worth reiteration. Scholars disagree with Hunt on her claims: Drawing causation between reading novels and inventing human rights is a long shot, some may argue, and the chronology that Hunt lays out for the origins may be incorrect, others may insist. (I happen also to disagree with much of what Hunt says, but that is a separate discussion.)

What seems beyond dispute in Hunt’s argument, however, is that human rights aren’t something that have simply always been. Believing that other people are equal to us, that they have an identical human essence that entitles them to equal rights, is something people had to work on. The development of human rights necessarily had to be concomitant with the erosion of notions of foreignness. And all this, according to Hunt, occurred very recently. People haven’t always been thinking in terms of universal human rights. It’s a strictly modern phenomenon.

That makes sense, I think. We may have been able to imagine our neighbors as our equals in the past, but in order to conceive of an idea of human rights that is truly universal, or in order to think of something that transcends boundaries and is true regardless of any ostensible ‘foreignness,’ we needed to have a way to imagine or think about universality in the first place. We can only imagine this universality as a result of modern things like the telephone or the newspaper or now the Internet, which remind us all on a daily basis that we live not simply in a small town or city but in a large world with billions of people.

The ultimate moral of this for abolishing foreignness is that we must continually bear in mind how new and how precious the project of universal human rights and its concomitant abolition of foreignness is. This is a new, innovative project in human history, and if we want it to succeed, we need treat it like the young baby that it is. It is bound to stumble and fall as it works toward maturity, but when it stumbles and falls, we need to give it the resources and opportunities it needs to get back on its feet. And we should treat it with care and love and hope, excited to have the opportunity to know it in these, its earliest years.

Paris in the 1900s

It is hardest to write of those things about which we feel most deeply. Today I wish to write about someone whose words and life have profoundly influenced and inspired me. That person is Abdu’l Baha: the son of the founder of the Baha’i Faith and its leader from 1892 to 1921. I wish to address particularly what Abdu’l Baha had to say about the issue of ‘foreignness’.

One hundred years ago, on 16 and 17 October 1911, he gave his first recorded talk to the people of Paris. The theme of his talk was “the duty of kindness and sympathy towards strangers and foreigners”.

What did Abdu’l Baha see when he arrived in that centre of civilisation that led him to conclude that the first thing of which he should speak should be the relationship between natives and foreigners?

He did not however speak of borders or political theories. Nor did he speak of sovereignty or cultural difference. He spoke to us as individuals asking us to reflect on the way in which we treat strangers and foreigners in our midst.

“I ask you not to think only of yourselves,” he said.

These simple words seem to me to address the very heart of the divisions on which the exclusion of non-citizens is built.

He emphasized the need for action: of more than theory:

“What profit is there in agreeing that universal friendship is good, and talking of the solidarity of the human race as a grand ideal? Unless these thoughts are translated into the world of action, they are useless.The wrong in the world continues to exist just because people talk only of their ideals, and do not strive to put them into practice. If actions took the place of words, the world’s misery would very soon be changed into comfort.”

He described the kind of action he had in mind in terms of very direct and practical steps:

“When you meet a … stranger, speak to him as to a friend; if he seems to be lonely try to help him, give him of your willing service; if he be sad console him, if poor succour him, if oppressed rescue him, if in misery comfort him. In so doing you will manifest that not in words only, but in deed and in truth, you think of all men as your brothers.”

Human beings and the relationships between them is central to Abdu’l Baha’s advice. It is ‘public policy’ that does not require great expense or complex analysis. It simply requires the exercise of the best in the human spirit. Abdu’l Baha’s words remind us of how close these issues are to us as individuals. The issues of migration are not divorced from community and life. They manifest in day to day experience, choices, attitudes and actions.

What would society look like if the actions and attitudes Abdu’l Baha encouraged characterized more closely the welcome that new members of the community received: whether the newcomers came from overseas or from the next city?

Such behaviour implies fundamentally different social relations. What need of new arrivals to ‘cling to their own’ in a community that makes them welcome? How would the individuals who participated in such interactions be changed by them? What would they learn? What kind of ‘community’ would emerge from the bonds of friendship so built? How would the toxic modern discourse around migration which characterises the modern world have evolved, had this kind of thinking characterized the behaviour of society?

The record of European history after 1911 travelled regrettably in the opposite direction. For hatred of foreigners led to one war after another. Between the wars, nations shut their doors to immigrants and to growing human suffering from which they fled. By the late 1930’s racism plunged the world into the greatest war it has ever seen.

Before Abdu’l Baha left Paris he returned to the theme of the relationship with those we consider ‘foreigners’ speaking of the ‘Cruel Indifference of People to the Suffering of Foreign Races’. What he describes we still see manifested in news reports.

“I have just been told that there has been a terrible accident in this country. A train has fallen into the river and at least twenty people have been killed. This is going to be a matter for discussion in the French Parliament today, and the Director of the State Railway will be called upon to speak. He will be cross-examined as to the condition of the railroad and as to what caused the accident, and there will be a heated argument. I am filled with wonder and surprise to notice what interest and excitement has been aroused throughout the whole country on account of the death of twenty people, while they remain cold and indifferent to the fact that thousands of Italians, Turks, and Arabs are killed in Tripoli! The horror of this wholesale slaughter has not disturbed the Government at all! Yet these unfortunate people are human beings too.Why is there so much interest and eager sympathy shown towards these twenty individuals, while for five thousand persons there is none? They are all men, they all belong to the family of mankind, but they are of other lands and races. It is no concern of the disinterested countries if these men are cut to pieces, this wholesale slaughter does not affect them! How unjust, how cruel is this, how utterly devoid of any good and true feeling! “

So much has changed in 100 years, but in other ways so little. As I write another war affecting North Africa and Tripoli is coming to an end. From time to time we are more ready to care for the lives of those we consider foreigners than the people of 1911, (perhaps more readily in those cases in which we see some benefit to ourselves) yet most of them time we explicitly and implicitly discount the value of the human life of those who do not share our language, nationality and customs.

To imagine 1911 is to imagine a world that has in many ways passed away. European colonial powers were at their height, largely controlled by monarchies and associated aristocratic and commercial interests. Society was ridden by divisions of class, race and gender. Education was denied to the great bulk of humanity.

One thing has however changed for the worse. In 1911, most of the world’s borders were far more open than they are today. It was the social upheaval of World War 1 that led to their closure. We have forgotten that there was a time when people could travel and live in other parts of the world far more freely that we allow today.

The bare facts of Abdu’l Baha’s life cannot capture the depth of his humanity and the complex dimensions of his contribution, but I would like to say something about them.

From the age of 9, he lived in exile and imprisonment with this father and family under the authority of the Ottoman Empire. He was known for his service to the poor: personally devoting himself to care of the poor and the sick in the city of Akka where he was exiled. After World War 1 he was knighted by the British for the work he did to ensure that grain was available for the people of the city during the war, preventing starvation. He was known to leaders of thought in the Middle East of the time. Baha’u'llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith entrusted the leadership of the Baha’i community to him.

The central theme that he repeated time and again was the concept that all human beings are one: all members of one family. His understanding of what was most central in the Baha’i Faith lifted and challenged the vision of both its adherents and those interested in its ideas. He challenged racism and prejudice in both word and deed in an age when the most esteemed colleges of learning clothed racism with the respectability of scientific endorsement. He called for equality of men and women: and upheld the right of women to enter all branches of society, when women were still struggling to obtain the right to vote in the countries representing the home of modern democracy. He urged the abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty, a recurrent theme again emerging as an issue in the 21st century. The need for justice and the establishment of universal human rights featured among those elements that he believed to define the Baha’i Faith. He spoke and met with both the person on the street and leaders of society in travels that spanned Europe and North America.

In a time when many thinkers in the Middle East were uncritically urging their societies to adopt the ways of the West: he saw the writing on the wall. By 1913, when he gave his last talk to the people of New York before returning to the East, he had repeatedly warned of the great war that was to engulf society. He urged people to work for peace. More, he called us to dedicate our lives to overcoming the age long divisions that have beset the human family.

Source:  Paris Talks, Promulgation of Universal Peace

In this connection, it is perhaps helpful to consider the 1988 text “The Ethnic Origins of Nations” by Anthony Smith. In the book, Smith tacitly agrees with other notable nationalism scholars, including Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson, in asserting that nationalism is essentially a modern phenomenon: it is only as a result of modern technologies that the concept of a nation could even be conceived. But Smith also complicates this assertion of nationalism’s modernity by pointing out that nations tend to have pre-modern “ethnic cores,” or what he terms ethnie. Accompanying a nation’s ethnic core, according to Smith, are myths and legends about a nation’s past, imaginations of a golden age in the distant path, and the romanticizing of the national landscape, which all function to tie a people together—and, in turn, exclude others.

While a thorough consideration of Smith’s work in all its complexity is beyond the scope of this discussion, it is perhaps interesting to note a remark that Smith makes almost in passing in the eighth chapter of his book. Smith makes this claim: “[N]ostalgia for one’s ethnic past has become more acute and more widespread and persistent in the modern era, with the decline of tradition and salvation religions. In this sense, ethnic nationalism becomes a ‘surrogate’ religion which aims to overcome the sense of futility engendered by the removal of any vision of an existence after death, but linking individuals to persisting communities whose generations form indissoluble links in a chain of memories and identities.” Regardless of whether we agree or not, it is an assertion provocative enough to deserve consideration.

Smith’s characterization of ethnic nationalism as a ‘surrogate religion’ stems from his assessment of the role of “science, utilitarian philosophies and acquisitive materialism” had in “promot[ing] a secular conception of history.” Until modernism and its accompanying secularism, traditional religion has endowed humans a distinct sense of time, both with respect to the span of history, positioning them in a tradition from millennia before, and with respect to their own lives, promising life eternal even after the end of terrestrial or corporeal life. When secularism pushed religious thought aside, the innate human yearning for a sense of timelessness did not simply go away. Rather, society filled the void created by religion’s marginalization with burgeoning notions of ethnic nationalism, the idea that a certain people were entitled to a piece of territory in part because their forefathers had also lived in that same territory. This is what Smith seems to argue.

Of course, as Smith persuasively illustrates, ethnic nationalism’s claim to a timeless nation was to a large extent a fabrication. European nations—not just recent creations like Italy and Germany but also supposedly ancient countries like France and Britain—were created in the last few centuries. Before that, the various peoples living in what is now, say, France, had little conception of being “French.” The idea of a collective “French” past was a modern construction. Of course, ethnicity is something with historical roots, but it was ambiguous and without real boundaries, only coming to be reified in recent centuries.

Is ethnic nationalism, then, just filler for the void left when religion is removed from society? That is for each individual to judge on his or her own. But thinking about ethnic nationalism as not merely a state of mind or a general concept but something as institutional and deeply rooted as a religion has profound implications for how we perceived foreignness. Perhaps nationalism is not so innocuous as one would think; perhaps we are buying into a complex, recently constructed system of thought when we insist on ethnic definitions of nationhood.

Between Virtue and Power

Closing borders: to refugees, to undocumented migrants, raises questions of virtue and questions of power.

The public debate around borders is so fractured, so superficial, so bedevilled with assumption and ritual conflict that it conveys little new meaning.  It simply reiterates the existence of a continuing contest – a contest that often is more about power than rights.

In this contest we see progressively increasing brutality and violence.  Resort to force, implicit or explicit, is the modern day tool of choice underpinning this public debate.  Whether in the sophisticated armory and defenses of international borders or the increasing instances of riot of those who assert their freedom.  The tiny island of Lampedusa saw such an example this week: naked brutality (in this case state violence) in a dispute that now spans the globe.  It is hardly an isolated instance, and to hold those on that tiny part of the Earth solely responsible, either those who have arrived uninvited, or those who respond with violence, would be unfair.  Beyond the shores of the island stuctures of power, questions of virtue have played out.  The entire way in which we see borders and what they mean to us creates the circumstances where such violence, in one form or another, becomes in the end, a virtual certainty.

What is clear is that for our fellow human beings to be violently beaten in such circumstances is contrary to everything we would recognise as human virtue:  kindness, hospitality, friendship, generosity.  Where we find such virtues absent we may readily conclude that change is required.

What change however?  It is clear that such conduct, right or wrong, is an exercise in human power.  So perhaps this is where questions need to be asked.

Power is so pervasive in human relationships that it is indeed hard to think of human beings relating to each other in sensible ways without power being central to those relationships.  Yet at the heart of human rights are notions of equality, brotherhood and human dignity that stand in tension to power.  Indeed the central idea of human rights is that power may never be exercised in ways that violate these notions.

On the other side of the planet, on a much larger island, the High Court of Australia was faced with these questions when considering the fate of asylum seekers challenging government laws seeking to deport them to Malaysia.  The High Court began with the fact of contest:

“These proceedings involve legal issues which arise in a strongly contested area of public policy. The public policy contest relates to the way in which Australia deals with non-citizens who enter its territory by sea without visas and invoke Australia’s protection obligations under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) as amended by the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (1967) (“the Refugee Convention”).”

Having noted the struggle for power, the Court retreats to its inaccessible temple:  interpretation of the law.  Of course it must, for this its role.  Yet in political life the contest for power continues:  a contest between those who have power, those who desire it, those who seek to preserve it.  The law in such circumstances may become meaningless or at worst an instrument of oppression.  It is only accidents of power that will determine the eventual outcome for those who seek refuge in Australia, or so it seems.

Much of the debate in Australia where human rights is concerned has asserted the right of democratic decision making in such matters.  The will (the power) of elected parliaments must not be constrained by unelected judges.  It is a simplistic argument.  For here we face questions of what we mean by “democratic”.  For those who elected the parliaments exercise by proxy power not only over themselves, but over those who have never had a say – never had a vote.   Questions of power again at the centre of matters.

So much of human history has been about power.  Yet the world has changed.  Not so much that power does not matter.  But enough that we might begin to question whether we wish our future to be determined by ‘power’.  We no longer wish questions of fundamental human relationships to be decided solely or even predominantly by power.  For the ultimate end of power is the enslavement of those who do not have it.  It is clear enough that we do not wish such a future for ourselves or others.  If power is no longer to be so central an ordering principle – then where do we find the principles on which order can be built?

It is in this context that we face the question of borders.  The imbalances in the world drive a desperation to escape.  It is a reasonable desperation.  A desperation that comes to point of conflict at the border.  If we would not make slaves of ourselves and others then it is at that point that conflict must be removed.  If we would have human relationships conditioned by human virtue rather than human power, the borders must be opened.  If we admit as much, perhaps we can find a sensible basis of public debate.  Let us frankly admit that no theory of justice worth the name renders fair or just what we see happening at our borders.   Let us also carefully consider the current ordering of affairs, where the well to do and citizens of the global north have freedom of movement, but the poor of the global south do not: and ask if this can be just.

Human virtue calls us to better.   So ought we not seriously to begin to ask how we can walk the journey from where we are to where we might be?  But what would a world with open borders look like?  How might we ensure that new injustices do not replace the old?  Perhaps we have arrived at the point where such questions must seriously be asked.  Not solely as tools of rhetoric but as the subject of careful and searching examination.  Lives are at stake.

Image Source:  Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisellavecchi/5649945056/

Wikimedia Commons

An inevitably recurring theme in discussions of foreignness is the disjunction between our increasingly globalized world and global systems that limit and misrepresent that globalization. We have found this tension in economics this month: the European Union’s ongoing economic struggles and this month’s financial roller coaster, triggered by the U.S. debt crisis, are both symptoms of global society haltingly coming to terms with an interconnectedness unprecedented in history. And, perhaps equally poignantly, we have found it in politics: global reactions to turmoil in Libya signal uneasiness and uncertainty in our collective understanding of the extent to which global society should intervene in the affairs of a sovereign state.

When revolution swept across North Africa around six months ago, few could have prognosticated how events would pan out. So when uprising in Libya began to be thwarted by a decades-old authoritarian government, and when it began to appear that the lives of civilians were under threatened, the international community, under the leadership mainly of the UK, France, and other NATO nations, moved to intervene under a Security Council mandate. At the time, many observers viewed with skepticism and concern the decision to implement military force. The New York Times, while expressing support for the intervention in a March 21 editorial, nevertheless emphasized that there remain “enormous questions” in the legitimacy, strategy, and objectives of an attempt to topple the Libyan government. “There is much to concern us,” the editorial board stated unequivocally.

Several months on, with the collapse of the Gadhafi government finally achieved, there appears to be greater consensus in celebrating the apparently successful vindication of the responsibility-to-protect (R2P) philosophy that guided the intervention. The Washington Post affirmed, as it expressed its support for what it deemed justified U.S. participation in Libya action, “The right question for the United States and its allies isn’t whether to help oppressed people fight for freedom, it’s when.” The Canadian publication Globe and Mail, while expressing disapproval at the latitude used in interpreting R2P, never questions in its skeptical take on Libya the validity of the R2P axiom, merely quibbling over the manner in which it was appropriated, invoked, and implemented. General consensus points to a reaffirmed faith in the need for global coalition to safeguard the rights of civilians, sometimes even when that means trampling on state sovereignty.

Whether the Libyan intervention was justified or not, whether it was a genuine attempt to uphold the rights of Libyan civilians or whether there were ulterior interests that vitiated the ostensible nobility of the plan, whether the intervention was carried out appropriately—all these are fair questions, but they are beside the point when we look at the situation through the lens of foreignness studies. At its heart, what the Libya situation suggests to an observer interested in its implications for foreignness, and more importantly, what responses to that situation suggest, is how callow our world still is in dealing with situations that present a challenge to entrenched, traditional understandings of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Regardless of whether we herald Libyan intervention as a tragedy or a victory, we surely can agree that it caused us to think once again about what it means to be living in a globalized world, one where we must continue to contemplate the implication of the belief that there is a common human-ness that overrides national distinctions, or that there are rights so universal and so fundamental that they are worth fighting for. And we can further agree, no doubt, that we still do not have to a collective, satisfactory solution to these fundamental questions. We can agree, then, that we must continue to grapple with what ‘foreignness’ means and how ‘foreignness’ functions in a new century and a new world order.

Like so many other issues, the Libya affair of the past several months has been, at its essence, a foreignness issue. Before we can come to an informed opinion on what transpired specifically in Libya, we must acknowledge that there are primary, more general questions: What does it even mean to intervene in a ‘foreign’ society? How can a state be ‘foreign’ for political purposes but its people not be ‘foreign’ in humanitarian intervention? What place does ‘foreignness’ have in our modern political systems? And do the philosophies, doctrines, and values underpinning those systems accurately reflect and represent a world in which the meaning of ‘foreignness’ is in constant flux, in which there is no stability to ‘foreignness’ as an ontological reality? Perhaps these are the questions we must ponder before, or as, we ponder Libya.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a remarkable worker for human rights.  Although he lived more than a century ago, his thoughts remain pressingly relevant.

He began life as a slave, but winning his own freedom, he fought not only for abolition of slavery but also gave his support to other human rights causes, such as the emancipation of women.

Born in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, he was separated from his mother at an early age, he writes, as was typically done with slave children.  His father, he believed, was his mother’s master.  Even though it was against the law for slave children to be taught to read and write, Sophia Auld the wife of one of his master’s brother, began his education.  When this was discovered it was put to a stop, but Douglass found opportunities to continue to learn on his own.  The fact that it was forbidden told Douglass that ‘knowledge is the pathway to freedom’.   While still enslaved he used his knowledge to secretly teach fellow slaves to read the bible, until their meetings were discovered.

Douglass’ opportunity to escape came when, due to his skills, he was hired out by his master to work for wages (the wages being paid to his master rather than him).   Douglass worked at caulking ships and on 3 September 1838 he escaped, disguised as a free sailor, bearing false documents of a free man.

These small details of slavery tell us how it was systematically maintained, the oppressed kept in their servitude by both legal and non-legal devices.

After his escape, Douglass settled in Massachussets and was quickly drawn into abolitionist circles.  In 1845 he published his first autobiography telling the story of his early life and escape to freedom, but fearing laws which might allow his legal master to claim his ‘property’ back, Douglass travelled to Ireland, of which he commented:

I breathe, and lo! the chattel [slave] becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab – I am seated beside white people – I reach the hotel – I enter the same door – I am shown into the same parlour – I dine at the same table – and no one is offended… I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people.

Supporters raised funds to purchase legal title from his master and he returned to the United States.  In 1848 we find him as the sole African American present at the Seneca Falls Conference which called for the emancipation of women.  His life was one of public service and advocacy for the human rights of African Americans, both before and after the civil war.

In the title of this article we adapt words from Frederick Douglass’ 1852, 4th of July speech, which we reproduce in full below.  At the time, slavery still persisted in the southern states of the United States.

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful  owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the  wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled  by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great  difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard  to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans,  dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to  freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively.   To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your  understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not  know that slavery is wrong for him.

Of course his point is that for a society which believed it to be self evident that that all men have the inalienable right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, it would be embarrassing to the society itself to have to argue that slavery is wrong.  It is obviously so.

The passage of more than a century and a half has not lessened the embarrassments of society for like Douglass, we might now say ‘Would you have me argue that all men are equal?’. Must we argue that it is wrong to violate the human rights of foreigners?  Can anyone who believes in democracy seriously argue it?  Wouldn’t it be ridiculous, taking Douglass’ insight, to debate fine points of philosophy to establish that which is accepted axiomatically.  Indeed it would.

Yet like the institution of slavery against which Douglass fought to both free himself and others, our societies practice human rights violations of the same kind.  Violations which makes men and women ‘foreigners’, and having attached that classification to our fellow human beings we are apt to forget their humanity – to strip them of it.

That this is so is obvious, when we recall that we think nothing of depriving a foreigner of freedom, of expelling them from our midst, of denying them the right to work or a voice in government.  In our media, we portray the ‘foreigner’ who might cross our border as an invader and an object of fear as someone who threatens our prosperity and very way of life.   Such a lack of voice, of legal standing, of social inclusion creates conditions ripe for exploitation, and in many places of the world, this is just what results.

“Human rights abuses faced daily by an estimated two to three million migrant workers in Thailand include violent attacks and killings by government security forces and private individuals, extensive use of torture and ill-treatment in detention, sexual abuse, widespread labor rights abuses, and pervasive extortion. In every region…abuses of migrants were systematic and those filing grievances faced immediate, violent retaliation from a nexus of local police, officials and employers. Severe restrictions on migrants’ rights to establish trade unions, to legally organize groups or associations, and to assemble and express views further reinforce the vulnerability of migrants to abuses.” From Human Rights Watch

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/06/06/thailand-increasing-abuse-migrant-workers

 Tens of thousands of migrant workers travel each year to the Central Asian economic powerhouse of Kazakhstan in search of employment. Thousands of these migrant workers, often together with their children, find work in tobacco farming…some employers confiscated their passports, failed to provide them with written employment contracts, did not pay regular wages, arbitrarily deducted their earnings, and forced them to work excessively long hours. Some employers also failed to provide migrant workers with potable water, adequate hand-washing and other sanitary facilities, or adequate living conditions. In the worst cases, workers carried out forced labor, or were subject to situations analogous to forced labor, in which employers confiscated migrant workers’ passports and in some cases required them to perform other work without pay, in addition to tobacco farming. From Human Rights Watch “Hellish Work: Exploitation of Migrant Tobacco Workers in Kazakhstan”

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/94813/section/4

 ”In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised. They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage. They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police. I met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000 among the Indians alone.” Johann Hari A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour The Independent 27 November 2009.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johannhari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html

Indeed so closely is the condition of ‘foreignness’ associated with practices that we regard as slavery, that it led US Ambassador at Large for Modern Day Slavery, John R. Miller, in his article Call it Slavery, to observe:

Today’s slaves are not dragged off in chains, but they are just as effectively deprived of their freedom by force or threats. They are bought, sold, and leased. … In most countries, what distinguishes the victims is not their color but their foreignness or otherness. Most of the survivors I talked to were attracted by the promise of a job in a distant land. Once there, they found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings and unable to escape.

So let us turn for inspiration to the wisdom of Frederick Douglass in his fight against chattel slavery, for surely his words ring true.

__________________

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

 Frederick Douglass

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory….

…Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America.is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their mastcrs? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….

…Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. — Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. ‘Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee

The wide world o’er!

When from their galling chains set free,

Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny

Like brutes no more.

That year will come, and freedom’s reign,

To man his plundered rights again

Restore.

God speed the day when human blood

Shall cease to flow!

In every clime be understood,

The claims of human brotherhood,

And each return for evil, good,

Not blow for blow;

That day will come all feuds to end,

And change into a faithful friend

Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,

When none on earth

Shall exercise a lordly power,

Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;

But to all manhood’s stature tower,

By equal birth!

That hour will come, to each, to all,

And from his Prison-house, to thrall

Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,

With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,

To break the rod, and rend the gyve,

The spoiler of his prey deprive –

So witness Heaven!

And never from my chosen post,

Whate’er the peril or the cost,

Be driven.

Image Source:  Wikimedia Commons Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg

Information Sources:  Information sources for this article include the wikipedia article on Frederick Douglass, which includes more detail on his life.

In an age of anxiety you don’t hear people say it so much.  And you certainly won’t hear anyone say “It’s a free planet”.  For some people it’s getting less free all the time.

The retreat in planetary freedom is measured in the rise of terms such as “border security” and the real and virtual fences are going up on the borders of the world.

The barriers going up not just at the borders – within countries and beyond them mechanisms to keep ‘them’ out are being reinforced all the time.  The highest and most impassable barrier is the wall being built in our minds, so that it becomes more and more difficult to even see the possibility of a world where such barriers didn’t exist, or a world where being a fellow human being was always more important than being a ’foreigner’.  The walls in our minds are so high that we have forgotten that once the physical boundaries did not exist – that before World War I people moved freely.

In the 21st century, in the case of Europe the construction of barriers is extending far beyond national boundaries.

In their 2009/2010 annual report Migreurop, an NGO focussed on the rights of migrants in the context of the European Union, looked at the effect of the barriers being created far from Europe.   They capture the situation in an Amnesty International report of the arrest of a man in Mauritania on suspicion of the intent of migrating.  The suspicion arose because he was wearing a Barcelona soccer team jersey.

In order to keep potential migrants from the shore, Europe has developed cooperation with countries in North Africa to ‘manage’ migrant flows.  As controls further to the north displaced migration routes to Mauritania, Europe extended measures there, resulting in 2006 in the creation of a detention centre in Nouadhibou.  This is a border which extends 2000 kilometres from mainland Europe.

The effectiveness of development aid to this North African neighbour was in the period post 2008 measured not only in terms of poverty eradication, but also in terms of governance, a term which was now to include in its meaning, success in preventing ‘illegal’ migration flows.   This is a strange way to provide development assistance, and a strange way to receive it.

The erosion in freedom was also underlined by the fact that these measures impinged on the traditional freedom of movement between African countries in the region that had existed prior to the European intervention.  Migreurop describes conditions in the region where generally permissive regimes existed allowing people of the region to move relatively freely into Mauritania.   Identity cards were sufficient for freedom of movement.  Work permits were not required.   These historical freedoms have been replaced with the highly policed and securitized measures with which we have become familiar.

Information Source:

Migreurop, European Borders Controls, Detention and Deportations

Image Source:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azrainman/1003163361/in/photostream www.azrainman.com