Home ist where we want to live!

Human beings must be able to decide freely and independently the place where they want to live. They should be able to choose if they prefer to live where their roots are or in a place different from where they were born.

However, states, economic power and political structures, unrelated to the daily life of men, women and children in the world, impose arbitrarily their will upon people by means of force and violence. Such is the case of relocation programs, deportation and family separation; they are responsible for the difficulties workers and their families have to face when they migrate including the obstacles placed by not having the right to decide the country they want to migrate to.

The right to choose where to live is a primary and fundamental human right, trampled upon daily. To obtain this right, affirm it and defend it we need to carry out an extraordinary mobilization.

Therefore, having already gotten the approval of the Peoples Movement Assembly at the World Social Forum for Migrations in Quito, Ecuador 2010 for a day of world mobilization on December 18, 2011, we propose that an assembly take place at the World Social Forum in Dakar to discuss and approve a concrete plan to carry out this international day of action.
This should be a mobilization in which we, from the base, take ownership of the date in which the United Nations passed the Convention for the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families.

This should be a mobilization that places at the center of attention the inalienable rights of all human beings; rights that are nowadays in danger or brutally denied.
This should be a mobilization in which we reclaim the right to migrate and also not to migrate if we so choose; the right to leave or stay; the right not to be forcefully displaced.

This should be a mobilization that takes different shape in different places, because of the diversity of means of struggle and specific demands that we can raise; we will struggle according to the means we have at our disposal where we live, but it should be clear that we all recognize each other as one single global movement.

ARCI (Italia); CGIL (Italia); Federacion Estatal de asociaciones de inmigrantes y refugiados en España - Ferine (Spagna); Boston May Day Committe (Usa); SOLETERRE ONLUS (Italia); Prevención, Capacitación y Defensa del Migrante, A. C." PRECADEM, A. C. (Mexico); Mujeres Abriendo Caminos, Guatemala/California; Programa de Migraciones PCS CAMEX (Mexico); i(dh)eas, Litigio Estratégico en Derechos Humanos (Mexico); Asociación de Familiares de Migrantes "Rumiñahui" - 9 de enero (Ecuador); Centro de Derechos Humanos del Migrante en Ciudad Juárez (Mexico); Centro Feminista de Información y Acción (CEFEMINA) Costa Rica; Foro Nacional para las Migraciones (FONAMIH) Honduras; Pateras de la vida (Marocco); UFCW Canada; PCS-Consejeria en Proyectos - Guatemala; association AFVMC-Aide aux Familles et Victimes des Migrations Clandestines (Cameroun); Centro de Planificación y Estudios Sociales, CEPLAES Ecuador; NALACC (USA); Association Beni Znassen pour la Culture, le Développement et la Solidarité (ABCDS) (Marocco); Migraeurop

Contact: Edda Pando ARCI (Italia) - eddamilagros (at) fastwebnet.it

Dakar, January 2011