Citizenship Appeal

Citizenship Appeal

We are the citizens of West Asia, North Africa and the Caucuses countries: like the other citizens of the world countries, were born free, and eligible to access our rights the same as any other human beings. As such, we cannot accept to be merely subjects and compatriots fragmented by familial, tribal, sectarian, cliental, religious, or any other type of selfish interest based fragmentation mechanisms.

Formal and Real Citizenship

We seek to be empowered to transform the status of citizenship in our countries by ourselves. Citizenship should not be only recognized in the official articles in the constitutions and laws in our countries, without being connected to crucial positive changes in the actual political relationship between the state and the citizens. We need transforming the vague concept of peoples sovereignty to become a grass root demand as a point of departure for the creation of participatory democratic ruling system.

Sharing Freedom

Upon that we should all have equal access to, and enjoy our civil, political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental rights and liberty, including women, children, youth, disabled, and all marginalized groups in our societies. These freedoms should not be related only to the public sphere, but also all citizens should enjoy such freedom in the private sphere of the family and private life, without any discrimination against women and children.

Participation not elitism

The conceptual changes should be accompanied with changes on the ground in regards to the practice of our freedoms. In this regard, we seek to take always part in the policy making process affecting our lives, be in political, social, economic, cultural, or environmental issues of our countries. Accordingly, we will, then, practice the essence of the inner meaning of citizenship which is embedded on the right to participate in the governance.

Equal Rights for Minorities

In practice also, all minorities in our countries should enjoy equal freedoms like the majority, regardless of their race nationality, religion, ethnicity, language or any other type of identity background. In our countries, we should put an end to the status of stateless persons or groups, and find away to grant them citizenship that meets their aspirations, including refugees, without the use of any pressure, imposition or misleading procedures on them in this regard.

Nationality and Citizenship

Moreover, we look for the advancement of free choice of citizenship status for each resident in our countries in accordance to his or her national aspiration. In this sense, citizenship expresses the reciprocal relationships of rights and duties between the human beings and the state, while nationality is the official document that expresses the citizenship bond. No imposition of nationality should be accepted for any person against his / her citizenship affiliations.

In this sense we will defend the rights of the stateless and refugees, and struggle against any discrimination towards the minority groups.

New Role of the State

This conceptual and practical transformation of citizenship will require a shift in the relationship between the individual and group members of our states, towards restructuring it to formulate a new social contract based on maximizing citizens power through participatory democracy structures and practices. In this sense, the states policies should be human security driven, holding supervisory roles with minimum tasks. Allowing also civil society organizations to function as service providers for its citizens the individual should not see the government as the sole and ultimate determinant of their fate.

Loyalty to Democratic Institutions and Regional Unions

We have our rights to our homelands, and our belonging to it transcends any other loyalty, a loyalty expressed towards the democratic institutions of our country rather than the ruling authority. In this regard, we should be consulted in any legal process towards establishing any union, unions, or federation of states in the region. Such process should be responsive to our needs, and meet our aspirations and it should be implemented in peaceful means, similar to the process of the establishment of the European Union. It should also be built on the basis of participatory democratic practices.

Equal Social Life

In our societies, we should enjoy the right to equal member ship built on the bond of citizenship that goes in the social level beyond the fragmentations of the groups, and the atomization of the individuals. We opt for diversity as an alternative to fragmentation and to the promotion of the role of the individual and his/her rights and responsibilities in a multi-cultural society as an alternative to atomization and to total isolation of any person or group.

Evolutionary Path to Citizenship

Our transformation process for citizenship is an outcry against authoritarianism (political and social), extremism, occupation and invasion. Our transformational path to citizenship is evolutionary and non-violent, and strive to meet with the constructive contents of religions as an element of coexistence and tolerance, based on equality and freedom of all citizens regardless of their religious affiliations.

Therefore we are aiming for the reform of the states and the laws, and we also aim to disseminate the citizens right to know his/her own rights, to be included in the educational process from its early stages, and also increase awareness of all member of society. An understanding of their responsibilities and duties should ensure the enjoyment of all rights, to be achieve by being part of the policy making process in their countries. In this sense we are not enthusiastic to the attempts to transplant citizenship in our countries by external interventions; we are not enthusiastic of state or clan or cliental groups to be our caretakers, and we are against any attempts for transformation to citizenship through the paths of violence and terrorism.

The Right to Know our Own Rights

As citizens in West Asia, North Africa and the Caucasus, we work for all the above mentioned on the basis of full respect and openness and communication with each citizen in our countries, regardless of the enmity between some of our own regimes, and regardless of all the anti-normalization stances that tend to separate between the peoples of the region. We are against the building of all walls of hatred and separation, and we are for the end of all types of occupation, extremism and authoritarianism, also we aim to transform internal and external enmities to civil peace that will be prevailing inside each country and in its relations with other countries.

Our Values

We build our internal relationships in Middle East Citizens Assembly on the basis of human security, solidarity, protection, and we work via coordination with all those who meet with our goals and objectives.

Upon that we are organizing ourselves by joining Middle East Citizens Assembly, in order to work together for our rights and social responsibilities.

I sign on this document.

NAME:

Annex

Middle East Citizens Assembly Mission:

Middle East Citizens Assembly is a citizens open movement established in 2001 in conjunction with the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in order to promote the transformation from subjects and compatriots to citizens in the West Asia, Caucuses, Central Asia and North Africa region, through citizens initiatives in the following fields:

1) Promote recognition of citizenship and human rights and their human security in all levels.

2) Enhance citizen interaction and the free intra and inter region flow of people regardless of their national identity, color, religion, or any other type of difference.

3) Promote Participatory democracy and democratic transformation processes in the region.

4) Advocate peaceful changes in the region and reject all forms of terrorism, including group as well as state terrorism, occupation and the spread of weapons of Mass Destruction.

5) Promote East West Dialogue, and togetherness between human beings in the basis of mutual respect of diversity and multiculturalism.