At the closing of the World Peoples' Conference on June 21 in Tiquipaya, Bolivia, social movements called for a “world without walls”. Forhis part, Bolivian President Evo Morales urged social movements to adopt the progressive proposals of the gathering's final declaration, which dubbed the migration crisis as just one symptom of neoliberal globalisation.
The Tiquipaya Declaration, resulting from the two-day conference, called for demolishing walls and building universal citizenship as foundations for pushing back against the rising tide of criminalising migration.
"Human mobility is a right rooted in the fundamental equality of human beings," read the final declaration. "However, in most cases, it is not a response to people's voluntary decision but situations of need that reach extremes of forced migration.
"We have outlined as main causes of this crisis war and military interventions, climate change and the enormous economic asymmetries between and within states.”
Among the declaration’s various proposals was a demand that public expenditures for war and the criminalisation of migration be used to create "integration programs that guarantee the full exercise of the rights of migrants and their families".
[Abridged from TeleSUR English.]
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