Universal Embassy was established in the unoccupied Somali embassy in Brussels by local activists, to help people living in Belgium without legal papers. For more information, visit the Universal Embassy online at
http://www.universal-embassy.be/ An excerpt from the Declaration of the Universal Embassy (12 December 2001):
“Universal Embassy has been established by a network constituted around the struggle of people without papers. It wants to bring together, beyond the borders of disciplines, citizens concerned with a universal thinking. On a short term, the Embassy is emergency housing.
Universal Embassy occupied the deserted building of the former Somali embassy disused since the tearing apart of the Somali State. We citizens of the world, with or without papers, have created an embassy out of the territory to reconstitute our rights.
The man without paper is a pariah, he has nowhere to feel at home. He reveals clearly the inanity of our conception of citizenship where the inclusion roads are crossing the one’s of exclusion. The users of this passage are creating a common world. Universal Embassy intends to trace the political expression of this common world.”
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