‘A World Without Walls is Under Construction’: Global Day of Action for a World Without Walls

On 9th of November 2017 movements from more than 30 countries, including India, are coming together to join action for a ‘World Without Walls’. This global mobilisation has been initiated by Palestinian and Mexican movements, that have recognised the walls they are struggling against as expressions of a “world where wars, militarisation and exclusion are to substitute justice, freedom and equality”. It is time to unite against the walls at our borders, on our lands and in our societies.

15 years ago Israel started building the apartheid wall on occupied Palestinian lands in West Bank and a year after, in 2003, Palestinians called for November 9, the day the Berlin wall fell, as International Day against Israel’s apartheid wall. This adds to the wall surrounding and isolating Gaza since 1994. Palestinians have been resisting these walls since the beginning, recognizing them as tools of expulsion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation. An International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in 2004 deemed this wall as illegal.

This year, movements from Mexico that have been fighting the Wall of Shame on US-Mexico border will join this mobilization with a caravan of activists from movements across the world travelling to the border on November 9th. This wall has been at the centre of Donald Trump’s racist propaganda and has been a means of profiteering for companies like Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries - the same Israeli military companies that are building the apartheid wall in Palestine and develop the military technology used for the repression and massacres against the Palestinian people. India is one of the most important importers of this technology, financing thus Israeli wars and walls with billions of dollars of public money.

There are more than 70 such border walls and walls in occupied territory dividing and displacing people across the world. Movements are joining this mobilization against these walls as well as walls of inequality and discrimination. The call states:

“Walls have not only risen to fortify borders of state control but demarcate the boundaries between the rich, the powerful, the socially acceptable and the ‘other’. They increasingly dominate our cities and societies. Tens of thousands linger as prisoners of conscience or under illegal and inhumane conditions behind prison walls. Visible and invisible walls, as is the case of the blockade of Cuba, aim to bar us from attaining economic, political, social and environmental justice.”

From India, movements against inequality, caste discrimination and patriarchy have joined this call.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign, calls upon Indian movements:

“We call upon you, so build together a World without Walls. For India, joining in this call could be an important moment to join a global effort to stand up for basic values that are getting eroded by the minute. For India November 9 - a World Without Walls - could mean a momentum of unity for diversity, tolerance and justice and in support of Palestine.”

Here is a short video reflecting the vastness of and motivations behind this mobilization:

Here is the call for the Global Day of Action for a World Without Walls:

https://www.stopthewall.org/2017/06/19/november-9-global-day-action-wor…

Maren Mantovani is Stop The Wall International Relations Coordinator