13 November 2006
Announcements - Habitat (Good)
The Right to Space Initiative
Trying to amend the E.U. constitution
by Carol Pinchefsky
Space Future's Dr. Patrick Collins and Technologies of the Frontier's Adriano Autino have created an initiative to amend the European Union Constitution. As a draft, the wording of the initiative may change, but the meaning will remain: a plea to the E.U. nations to give its citizens the right to travel to space.

Autino and Collins ask that citizens of the European Union sign the petition here.

The clause is as follows:


RIGHT TO SPACE
a constitutional clause draft
by A. Autino and P. Q. Collins

Following the evolutionary and technological success of humankind to date, we recognise that the planet of our birth, our beloved Earth, is becoming unable to shelter and provide maximum scope to all the humans living on it. Consequently the limits of our planet are coming to represent a serious obstacle to universal enjoyment of the fundamental right to freedom, which the Constitution recognises as the supreme good and the first inalienable right of every human being. The finite scale of the geographic, material and energetic resources of our planet increasingly set inescapable limits to the possibilities of social and economic progress of individuals and of communities. This situation would cause progressive reduction of fundamental human freedoms if human civilisation was to remain confined to our native planet, including the freedom to procreate, to achieve to the best of our the abilities, to better the living conditions of our children and to seek happiness through honest hard work in a context of increasing civilisation, democracy, comfort and mutual respect. Thus we propose to insert in the Constitution the following clause:

“The Constitution recognises the sacred and inalienable right of every inhabitant of Earth to travel from Earth to Space, to the Moon and to any celestial body, as well as to return to his or her own country or other countries on the Earth, while preserving all of their rights as a terrestrial citizen.

The Constitution promotes the development of all the conditions necessary to make such a right effective."(*)


(*) NOTES:
1) This proposal is addressed to the European Constitution, to the United States Constitution, and to every terrestrial constitutions which take liberty and human dignity at first places.

2) Our proposal also addresses an ipotetical Constitution of the Earthling Citizen of the 21ft Century, that we take actual and necessary.

3) In case this article would be inserted in a national Constitution, e.g. the European one, please replace the wording "terrestrial citizen" with "european citizen".

4) The phrasing of the proposal could slightly change, following suggestions and improvements, without changing the general meaning of the clause.
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Carol Pinchefsky 13 November 2006
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