The rights and duties of international citizenship

This statement was
read by Foucault at a press conference on June 19, 1981, organized in
association with Médecins du monde and Terre des hommes, in the presence of Yves Montand, André Glucksmann and Bernard Kouchner.

This statement was read by Foucault at a press conference on June 19th 1981, organized in association with the organizations Médecins du monde and Terre des hommes, in the presence of Yves Montand, André Glucksmann and Bernard Kouchner. The press conference, according to the newspaper Libération when it published Foucault’s text for the first time just after his death in 1984, was to have marked the public announcement of the formation of an International Committee against Piracy. Another account states that this Committee was set up in Lausanne on April 30 that year. The Libération editor’s note states that Foucault wrote this statement “minutes” before he read it. The title of the piece as published by Libération,“Confronting governments, human rights” seems to have been provided by them, not by Foucault. Given the public
profile of the event and those present, it is unclear why the text appears not
to have been published at the time.

"We
are here only as private individuals and with no other claim to speak, and to
speak together, except a certain difficulty we share in enduring what is taking
place.

I
know very well, and one must defer to this evident truth: we can do little
about the reasons which make men and women prefer to leave their country rather
than remain and live in it. It is not in
our power to change these facts.

So
who asked us to speak? No one, and that is exactly our entitlement. It seems to
me that we need to keep in mind three principles which, I believe, guide this
initiative, like several others that have preceded it: Ile-de-Lumière, Cap
Anamour, A Plane for El Salvador, but also Terre des Hommes and Amnesty
International.[1]

1)
There exists an international citizenship which as such has its rights and
duties, and which is obliged to stand up against all forms of abuse of power,
no matter who commits them, no matter who are their victims. After all, we are
all governed, and, by that fact, joined in solidarity.

2)
Because of their claim to care for the wellbeing of societies, governments
arrogate to themselves the right to treat in terms of profit and loss the human
suffering which their decisions cause and their negligence allows. It is a duty
of this international citizenship to always confront the eyes and ears of
governments with the human suffering for which it cannot truthfully be denied
that they bear responsibility. People's suffering must never be allowed to
remain the silent residue of politics. It grounds an absolute right to stand up
and to challenge those who hold power.

3)
We must refuse the division of labour which is so often proposed to us:
individuals are allowed to be indignant and to talk, while it falls to
governments to deliberate and to act. It is true that well-intentioned
governments appreciate the sacred indignation of the governed, providing that it
remains merely lyrical. But I think we must be aware that it is very often
those who govern who talk, are only able to talk, or only want to talk.
Experience shows that we can and must refuse the histrionic role of pure
protest which governments would like to offer us. Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes,
Médecins du Monde are initiatives which have created this new right: the right
of private individuals to intervene actively and materially in the order of
international politics and strategy. The will of individuals must be present
and expressed in the order of reality which governments have sought to
monopolise. Step by step and day by day, their purported monopoly must be
rolled back."

Translated
by Colin Gordon, October 2015

[1] Ile-de-Lumière was a French
hospital and rescue ship organized by Bernard Kouchner and others which conducted a series of missions in the South China Sea in 1979. Cap
Anamour was another rescue ship organised by the German humanitarian activists Christel
and Rupert Neudeck and others.

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