The freedom to choose a political community faces its hardest test when governments claim that ordinary rules must be suspended.
At a border crossing, a woman waits with her child. Fighting has reached their town. They want to leave before the roads close.
On the other side, a local official has a different fear. The receiving community has limited emergency housing, and the authorities are worried about security. Some residents want the border kept open. Others demand an immediate closure.
The woman does not ask the official to solve every problem in her life. She asks for a place where her child can sleep safely tonight.
The official cannot ignore local needs and safety. But neither can those needs make the woman’s danger disappear.
What should political freedom mean at such a moment?
In the World Citizen framework, I use Foot Democracy for the meaningful freedom to leave, enter, and choose a political community. It does not promise unrestricted movement. It challenges governments’ unlimited discretion over political belonging.
War, epidemics, and disasters expose the difficulty. Governments sometimes need extraordinary powers to protect life. Those powers can also destroy freedom.
The question is how to distinguish justified restrictions from permanent exclusion. My answer separates the decision to restrict now from the decision to continue restricting later—and asks what rights must be restored when the danger ends.
Five Things a Closed Border Can Affect
The phrase closing a border sounds like one decision. For the people affected, it may mean several different things.
A road may be impassable because of fighting, flooding, or infection control. This restricts physical movement without necessarily changing legal status.
A government may prohibit people from leaving. That can confine people within a political community, including those who fear persecution or war.
Another government may restrict entry. Someone can be free to leave yet lack a safe destination. Exit without Entry is especially painful in a crisis.
A person already admitted may face a restriction on residence: a permit cannot be renewed, a family cannot return to its home, or emergency housing is offered only on conditions that make ordinary settlement impossible.
Finally, a government may interrupt the path toward political membership. Residence years may stop counting; participation rights may be suspended; temporary security classifications may outlast the emergency.
These restrictions differ legally and practically. A quarantine is not the same as cancelling membership. Nor does evacuating a burning neighborhood give the state a general right to expel residents from the political community.
Forced evacuation may save lives; it is not Foot Democracy. People must also be able to ask whether they can return and retain their standing. Emergency derogation cannot excuse forcible population transfers lacking grounds permitted under international law. [2]
War Does Not Suspend Every Right
International human-rights law already distinguishes ordinary restrictions from emergency departures from treaty obligations.
Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects freedom of movement within a state for people lawfully there, the freedom to leave any country, and protection against arbitrary denial of entry into one’s own country. Its third paragraph permits certain restrictions on specified grounds, including national security and public health, when they are provided by law, necessary, and consistent with other Covenant rights. It does not create a general right to enter whichever foreign country one chooses. [1]
Article 4 addresses an officially proclaimed public emergency threatening the life of the nation. Movement rights under Article 12 may be derogated from, but any derogation must be strictly required, consistent with other international obligations, and internationally notified. Article 4 prohibits discrimination solely on grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, or social origin; nationality is not expressly listed, although other Covenant protections still apply. The prohibition of torture cannot be derogated from. [1][2]
Not every war measure requires derogation; calling political disagreement an emergency creates no unlimited powers.
The Fourth Geneva Convention supplies another, more specific framework during armed conflict. Article 35 allows protected persons in a party’s territory to leave unless departure is contrary to the state’s national interests, with reconsideration of refusals. Article 43 requires review of internment or assigned residence, at least twice yearly if continued. These protections are not a general right of every foreign national to cross any border. [8]
Consider an exit ban on everyone of military age. Defense needs may matter, but the group could include caregivers, conscientious objectors, and people without military duties. Legality depends on the actual law, scope, evidence, and exceptions.
The receiving side raises refugee law. The 1951 Convention protects refugees from return to threats on protected grounds, subject to its terms and the limited Article 33(2) exception. But fleeing fighting alone does not automatically satisfy the Convention definition, which requires a well-founded fear of persecution for a specified reason. People escaping generalized violence may instead qualify for regional, complementary, or temporary protection. [3]
The Convention against Torture adds a distinct rule: Article 3 bars sending someone to a state where substantial grounds indicate a danger of torture. It contains no counterpart to the Refugee Convention’s Article 33(2) exception. [4]
None of these instruments creates a general right to settle abroad as an equal political member. That gap is precisely what the World Citizen framework asks us to confront.
An Epidemic Is Not a War
During an outbreak, travel measures may slow transmission or protect hospitals. Those aims differ from military defense, even when both restrict movement.
The World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) provide an international framework for preventing and responding to the cross-border spread of disease. Their purpose includes avoiding unnecessary disruption of international traffic. Article 43 addresses additional health measures by states and requires, among other things, that such measures not be more restrictive of international traffic, or more intrusive for persons, than reasonably available alternatives capable of providing an appropriate level of health protection. [5]
The IHR do not place national emergency decisions under a world executive.
A testing or isolation requirement may address a specific risk. Indefinite exclusion by nationality may not, especially when the relevant facts concern exposure, symptoms, or transmission.
Evidence changes; restrictions must be capable of changing with it. Article 43 already requires states to review additional health measures within three months, and to notify WHO promptly of certain measures significantly interfering with international traffic. [5]
A flood may destroy roads and require immediate shelter before ordinary admission procedures. The Sendai Framework guides disaster preparation and cooperation, without defining cross-border political membership. [6]
Different emergencies require different instruments. Calling them all national emergencies does not supply one legal answer.
Who Decides Whether a Restriction Is Still Necessary?
A government must sometimes act before a court or legislature can examine every detail. That is one reason emergency powers exist. It is also why they require controls.
In The World Citizen Society, I propose the Principle of Proportionate Rights Coordination (PPRC). The first task is to find ways to protect legitimate public interests with less injury to rights. A restriction requires a legal basis, a defensible objective, relevant evidence, consideration of alternatives, proportionality, and meaningful review. The principle is part of my proposed institutional design; it is not a claim that every legal system already applies one identical test. [7]
During a crisis, this leads to practical questions.
If a border must close for several days, why those days? If a residence procedure must be suspended, what happens to applications already filed? Can families be separated indefinitely because administrative offices are closed? Who examines the claim that a person presents a specific security danger?
The government declaring an emergency should not alone decide whether its powers remain necessary.
Legislative oversight, independent courts, administrative appeals, and transparent reporting matter differently across constitutional systems. Reviewers must be able to examine whether the factual basis persists.
Executive emergency decrees may also bypass the receiving residents who disagree about closing the border. Legislative scrutiny and public reasons therefore protect Hand Democracy as well as Foot Democracy. Sometimes both residents and newcomers face the same danger: executive powers that escape review.
Review must be usable. People stranded outside the territory may lack documents or assistance; an appeal they cannot access is a weak safeguard.
There is no need to pretend that every claim can be decided immediately. But delayed review must not quietly become the disappearance of review.
Ending an Emergency Is a Political Decision Too
The harder problem may arise after the immediate danger has passed.
A temporary restriction can acquire supporters of its own. Officials may value the discretion it gives them. Institutions may become accustomed to new powers. People who have little political voice may find it difficult to demand restoration of the rights they previously enjoyed.
No Permanent Transition: When Temporary Restrictions Become Permanent Inequality examined temporary rules hardening into ordinary status. Emergency evidence may disappear while its restrictions remain.
The initial decision to restrict and the later decision to renew must be separate. The first cannot authorize the second indefinitely.
Existing wartime and public-health rules already demonstrate the value of periodic review. For a future World Citizen Society, I would extend that practice to political membership: state the purpose, set a review date, justify renewals, and restore ordinary rights when the reason ends. An expiry date may be extended for a continuing danger, but never by automatic habit.
The recovery of rights must also be concrete. A suspended residence application should not disappear from the system. A person who had acquired durable membership should not have to start again merely because an emergency interrupted ordinary administration. Periods of lawful residence and legitimately acquired status should not be erased as a penalty for obeying evacuation or travel restrictions.
These are proposals, not universally established international obligations. They require legal rules, administrative capacity, and review bodies that can function during disruption.
This matters for Membership Security. In The World Citizen Society, Model 3: Full Membership Security means a full political member is not ordinarily deportable simply for retaining foreign nationality. The UN Human Rights Committee has also interpreted one’s “own country” under ICCPR Article 12(4) to include some nonnationals with deep ties. In Nystrom v. Australia (2011), it found a violation where a man brought to Australia as an infant was removed. This is a limited human-rights precedent, not recognition of the full membership model. Ordinary criminal and security law remain distinct. [7][9]
The Freedom That Must Return
Return to the woman at the border.
Perhaps she receives temporary protection. Perhaps she is admitted only after a difficult security review. Perhaps the authorities cannot safely open one crossing and direct people to another. These outcomes are not identical, and no political theory can responsibly settle every fact in advance.
But some questions remain after the fighting stops. Can she and her child remain safely? If they build a life in the receiving community, is there a credible path toward political membership? Can they challenge a decision that treats their presence as permanently exceptional?
Receiving residents retain a voice about costs, safety, and sharing responsibility with other communities. Their concerns are real; neither an executive decree nor an unrestricted majority veto resolves them. [10]
Foot Democracy cannot mean that every checkpoint must remain open during an epidemic, that every damaged road must be passable, or that every security risk must be ignored. Its survival requires something more demanding: the temporary power to restrict movement must not become an unlimited power to decide who may ever belong.
The test comes after the emergency announcement has faded. Can the person who was told to wait still claim a place in the political community when the reason for waiting is gone?
Notes and References
[1] United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Articles 4 and 12. Article 12 protects specified freedoms of movement and entry into one’s own country; it does not generally guarantee entry into another state.
[2] UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 29: States of Emergency (Article 4) (2001); statement on derogations during COVID-19 (2020).
[3] United Nations, Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), Articles 1A(2) and 33; UNHCR, Refugee definition. The Convention definition and additional regional or complementary protection must be distinguished.
[4] OHCHR, Convention against Torture, Article 3.
[5] World Health Organization, International Health Regulations (2005), as amended in 2014, 2022, and 2024; consolidated text, Article 43. The amended text took effect for applicable States Parties in September 2025, subject to treaty-specific provisions and state positions.
[6] United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, What Is the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction?.
[7] Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society, Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 19 (Meaningful Entry, Membership Security, PPRC, and No-Permanent-Transition); The World Citizen Revolution, Chapters 36 and 38 (Hand/Foot Democracy and political transformation). Books.
[8] ICRC, Fourth Geneva Convention, Articles 4, 35 and 43. Provisions apply to persons protected under the Convention, not automatically to every foreign national.
[9] UN Human Rights Committee, Nystrom v. Australia, Communication No. 1557/2007 (2011); General Comment No. 27, interpretation of ICCPR Article 12(4).
[10] UNHCR, Global Compact on Refugees (2018), a non-legally binding framework for responsibility-sharing.
Related Essays
- What If Too Many People Want to Move to the Same Place?
- Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights
- Once Entry Is Won, How Is It Protected?
- No Permanent Transition: When Temporary Restrictions Become Permanent Inequality
- How Can Security Be Maintained During Political Transition?
