The right to homeland

Right to a homeland called a derived contentious individual's right to life in his homeland. This right was derived from the prohibition of banishment and the arbitrary deprivation of citizenship and the right of return migration (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and is found mainly in the Charter of the German expellees associations of expellees again. It is in international law has not generally recognized.

In the international law literature, there is outside the German legal family, no explicit evidence for the existence of a " right to a homeland " in the sense of protection from being forced to leave, care should emigrate to another country. There are isolated efforts to derive from the international sub-schemes such claim. Furthermore, a legal right to return a minority in their ancestral territory is affirmed in theory and would create substantial problems in practice about by " Umnationalisierungen " and immigration. The right to return, the United Nations recognized in connection with the self-determination of peoples, particularly Palestine, Cyprus, Cambodia and Afghanistan.

The constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany a ' right to a homeland "from the civil rights is derived to free movement under Article 11 of the Basic Law occasionally. Accordingly, Article 11 of the Basic Law protects the right to take any place within the federal territory residence and domicile, and thus implies a constitutionally protected " right to a homeland " with the content to be able to remain living at the selected origin. One goes beyond this scope, independent " right to a homeland " can not be found in the Constitution, however. The state constitutions of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Saxony see the right to a homeland explicitly.

Occasionally, the " right to a homeland " is also understood in the sense that the "home " of a people must be protected from " foreign infiltration " by the immigration and employment "home stranger ". Practices that can be derived from such conceptions, can in Germany violated the prohibition of discrimination in Article 3, Section 3 of the Basic Law, according to which no one may be favored or discriminated against because of his " homeland and origin ". They also violated if they are directed against EU citizens against EU law.

Discourses in Germany

Expulsion from political and ethnic grounds

Published on August 5, 1950 Charter of the German expellees postulated a "right to the home" and tried to explain to a natural law basis. The "right to the home " was not a generally accepted concept of international law.

In the 1950s, the promotion of a return of expellees was established on the basis of an alleged international law legal right to a homeland, make internal political dispel the mutual resentment of locals and immigrants, and to present residence of displaced persons as a stopgap in the Federal Republic of Germany. In foreign policy, it was used by nearly all parties to legitimize territorial claims. In the political confrontation of the Cold War, the Proclamation of a home right through the organized displaced persons and the resulting restitution of the home areas of the displaced has been criticized by their political opponents as " revanchism ". Except for the KPD all parties had the phrase " right to a homeland " or the compound home right in their election programs.

Later the term was used as a catchy political slogan mainly by right-wing extremist parties such as the DVU and the NPD. The political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher stated in 1980: " The slogan, right to a homeland ' and the demand for border revision sounded nowhere more so than in the NPD. "

The political demand for a " right to a homeland " in the sense of a right to return to former German settlement areas is not widespread today outside the expellees and only comes with most of its members little interest. The Federation of displaced heard her about only a numerical minority of the two according to him 15 million displaced persons. Critics maintain this membership for far too high.

The thesis of the right to the home is supported primarily by the German international lawyers Kurl Rabl, Rudolf Laun, Otto Kimminich and Dieter Blumenwitz, as well as by the Austrian international law Felix Ermacora and the American international lawyer, historian and winner of the Human Rights Award of the Sudeten German Alfred de Zayas also explained in connection with the "ethnic cleansing" in Yugoslavia. Blumenwitz, Dietrich Murswiek, Herbert Kraus, Theodore Veit and Frans du Buy postulated a right to a home as an expression of self-determination. The League of displaced persons and it was subdivided country teams are based on partly drawn from these legal scholars in their job expertise.

These experts also sit on committees and working groups of expellees and publish sporadically in them attributable publishers and series. De Zayas, Ermacora and Blumenwitz represented in the assessment of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans as genocide a minority position that will aid in particular, national-conservative spectrum of opinion. The genocide character of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans rejected about Christian Tomuschat. The classification as genocide and its prohibition is based on the construction of a " right to a homeland ". This right is based on an ethnic collective imaginary, which some critics see the continued attempt by the destruction of Czechoslovakia with a pitch of Bohemia and Moravia along ethnic lines.

Christian Graf von Krockow warns against over-stretch the term "homeland ". In particular, the idea is misguided, the " right to a homeland " could be " inherited by children and grandchildren ." "Home is born anew with each man, as she dies with every man. " Notes of Krockow. The "right to home runs himself in the wrong, in the threat when it declared and inherited a legacy is brought as a claim against others in such a position. "

Loss of home by a lack of usability

As a (potentially) " expellees " you can also look at people whose place of residence is made ​​uninhabitable by natural disasters or human intervention or is threatened. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection in 2002 provided support in its approval of the -site interim storage at the nuclear power plant Grohnde the thesis that there is a " right to a homeland ". This " right to a homeland " but does not mean that residents an interim storage facility for fuel would have the right to ban the operation of this plant.

Opponents of coal - brewing days Garzweiler II filed a claim before the Federal Administrative Court against the project on the grounds that the demolition of entire villages infringes its " fundamental right to a homeland ". This view was rejected by the court in 2008. The reason:

As early as 1983 was in connection with the construction of the dam negro, through which the village Brunskappel should disappear under the water surface, which had been incorporated " right to a homeland " in court as an argument.

Global discourses

From a " right to a homeland " also speaks of the Catholic Bishop of Banja Luka, Komarica who uses primarily for displaced persons in the former Yugoslavia. He bases this right theologically: "Every human being is created as Adam, from the earth and from the earth, from that ground, where he was born. The soil is a necessary part of every human existence. The birthplace is not only the space, in which the people bought, but also the space from which it is composed. "

A right to a home is by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP ) propagated. For this purpose, the demand of the STP was internationally after recording this right in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in 2000.

Greenpeace points out that residents of low-lying areas that are under threat from climate change-induced sea-level rise, a " right to a homeland " have.

Generalizing is Anne Peters, Professor of International and Constitutional Law at the University of Basel, states: " Environmental degradation undermines [ ... ] in principle all human rights recognized in international legal texts. For example, the establishment and the freedom of residence and the right to a homeland in low-lying atoll states and by the rise in sea level are at risk. In particular, the rights to privacy, health and fresh water, to a limited extent also the right to life, are effective only in a not overly stressed natural environment. "

Scientific Assessments

The political scientist and migration researcher Rainer Bauböck criticized the demand for a " right to a homeland " in the sense of a right to live in the country where you were born or grew up as one-sided. This requirement presupposes so Bauböck that migration and brain were exclusively negative evaluative phenomena: Firstly, for the people who left their original home (and thus " lose " ), the other for the companies that would have to absorb these immigrants and as their own culture at risk if they are " strangers " handle the immigrant population.

The " right to a homeland " was being used as a justification to restrict further immigration and to select by going to claims by the further influx of "foreigners " hear the "home" to provide a home by the country in which you live, " überfremdet " will.

Only in the second instance serve the demand for a " right to a homeland " of the improvement of living conditions in the countries of origin of those who wanted to leave this or deliberate whether she wanted to return there voluntarily, and will only last of all the " right to a homeland " in understood sense of obligation to accept refugees who can not return to their homes, that is, as the obligation to provide a "new home" for refugees. Accordingly, immigrants could not rely on the " right to a homeland " implies a right to stay after immigration. Still less could a not (eg by a Citizenship) privileged entry Williger on a " right to a homeland " in a country called, in which he had never lived: "No one can lay claim to a homeland in which he does not grew up. "says Rainer Bauböck.

On the other hand, to derive a right to a homeland in terms of creating countries or regions in which each "own" ethnic group forms a majority of the self -determination of peoples, in 1989 Ralf Dahrendorf fought back. Shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he presented the thesis: "There is no right of Armenians to live among Armenians " and not as a national minority together with other ethnic groups in a multiethnic state. By appealing to a self -determination of peoples, politicians wanted generally leave not only the change of state borders, but also the ethnic composition of the population in an area appear to be legitimate. So it was already Woodrow Wilson, who had spoken first excessively from a " self -determination of peoples ", went primarily about being able to justify the destruction of Austria -Hungary. " The so-called self-determination has served, among others, as an alibi for homogeneity, and homogeneity always means the expulsion or oppression of minorities ," says Dahrendorf.

Against the thesis that in talking of the " right to a homeland " was not concerned about helping people (economic) migrants had come to Germany as, says a statement by the then Federal Minister for Labour, Norbert Blum: "Our welfare accompanies the returnees. Their home countries to be helped. Because only then the world is in order, if the right to work is not separated from the right to a homeland. The jobs have to the people and not vice versa. The world is upside down, as long as this is different. "