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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

This article is about much more than just Ecuador.

Refugees in Ecuador: Organizing for Human Rights

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1539/1/

Excerpt:

In this nation-centric view, citizenship has undergone a historical construction. Dating from the Magna Carta, we see the base of the pyramid: civil rights that protect citizens from the excesses of their leaders. The next step is political rights, which allow citizens to democratically participate in government. Finally, there are the social rights of the welfare state that guarantee citizens a certain standard of living.1 However, there are strings attached. Citizens also have the responsibility to obtain certain documents, pay taxes, fight wars and raise families.2

How does this apply to refugees, people who used to be citizens of another country, but fled and renounced this protection? Most importantly, how does “citizenship” apply to those denied asylum, who instead of having rights are labeled as “illegal”?
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At best, the UNHCR’s attitude towards the vast population of de facto refugees in Ecuador who have been denied official asylum is a hesitance to challenge the decision of a sovereign state. After all, the UNHCR is committed to providing humanitarian assistance and must strictly avoid political issues. Because 98% of UNHCR funding comes from private donations, they fear open disputes with individual countries would stain their reputation and impact donations.

At worst, the UNHCR is complicit in a situation where Colombian refugees are denied their most basic human rights and are being deported back to a country where their lives are endangered. Such deportations are a flagrant violation of the principle of non-refoulement, the bedrock of the UNHCR mission, which states that persecuted people must never be deported to where their persecution took place.

The UNHCR controls the great majority of the donations given for refugee aid and is the leading informant to the media on refugee issues. Its refusal to acknowledge the struggle of undocumented refugees is why ARCOE leaders spoke about the “invisible population”: if the government and the UNHCR refuse to call you a refugee, then you don’t appear in any budget, any pamphlets or any press releases.

You’re not just invisible—you’ve been erased.
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If the old model of citizenship was confined to voting, enlisting, laboring and homemaking amongst native-born men and (eventually) women, this model is being radically expanded today. Across Latin America, people deemed “illegal” are empowering themselves to protect their human right to live peaceful, rooted, fulfilling and healthy lives despite constant challenges. Their human rights citizenship tears down these boundaries.

In Brazil, the Landless Worker’s Movement uses direct action techniques to fight for land rights, agrarian reform, and popular control of natural resources. In Ecuador, campesinos are resisting open pit copper mining and spreading grassroots environmentalism to protect their right to healthy, strong communities. In Argentina, workers are waging constant legal battles to defend their right to employment and recuperate closed factories. In Mexico, the Zapatistas weather constant persecution as they organize the Left “from the bottom up” and fight for rights of indigenous autonomy and land reform. In the US, undocumented immigrants create rich communities despite ever larger raids which seek to tear them apart. In Colombia, the Nasa Indians and other communities struggle for their right to peacefully remain on their land and stay out of Colombia’s conflict, despite violent repression from paramilitaries, the FARC and government forces.
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