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| No | 27% | 68 votes | Total: 252 votes | |
| Yes | 73% | 184 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThe answer is NO. In a totalitarian state, the leaders don't want the members of the society to travel. It is a bad idea to be able to visit other countries and to see other cultures and how other peoples solved political and social problems.
It is interesting to see that there are people who find arguments to justify the denial of freedom. It is totally hilarious, and sad to see that people have the right and the freedom to talk stupid, but they deny a basic right given by God upon Creation.
For now, this country is heading towards absolutism, and of course the right to travel is a concept which does not fit the scenario.
We went through a few thousands of years of history and evolution to learn that we are born with certain rights, and now, some of those who invade countries to "spread democracy" suggest that traveling is not a human right, let alone a basic human rights.
The issue is not "is freedom to travel a basic human right", the issue is "should the exercising of the basic human right of traveling be unrestricted"?
Let's see:
The Galapagos islands are the only few places in the world untouched by human greed and intervention. Should the basic human right to travel to Galapagos exercised? Obviously if we want to keep the places alive, the answer is NO.
The city of Chernobyl in Ukraine was made inhabitable due to an accident to a the nuclear plant located there. For a few hundred years the area will glow in the dark like a Christmas Tree with all lights on. Any person going there and staying beyond a very short time limit could get deadly radiation poisoning. Should the basic human right of traveling be exercised to visit those places for a thrill trip? And the answer is if you want to live NO.
I can come up with a lot of similar examples to justify curtailing this basic human right. I will make this attempt short saying that the basic human right to travel should not be exercised in cases when traveling will put the traveler in danger, would put the places traveled to in danger, would infringe on other basic human rights of others or would created social disturbance.
Is the freedom to travel a basic human right? The answer is YES. Should we exercise it indiscriminately without regards to other basic human rights? The answer is NO.
Learn more about this author, Mugurel Stejar.
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Yes
The right to travel wherever we please is a right, and a very special privilege. You can't expect human beings to be boxed away in a specific corner of the world. It's certainly not acceptable, nor very wise, to tell somebody they can't leave their home when they wish. No, if you are not in prison then nobody has the authority to restrict your movements, and there is no law that I'm aware of that says this is legal or in any way equitable.
Travelling is in our blood, whether it's a trip to the supermarket or a vacation on the other side of the world. The ancient Romans and the Vikings travelled, although they did so not because of curiosity and leisure but because they wanted to conquer. Back then, there were no laws as we understand them today. In order to enjoy the right to travel and see how other people live we have to obey a very clear set of regulations, like obtaining a passport and a visa if necessary. Good, honest and law abiding people should have this right.
Human beings have the right to an education, and sometimes because of widely different circumstances people must find that education on foreign shores. As long as they do it legally, and no laws have been broken, it's a perfectly natural thing to do. The same goes for employment, if a young student has a thirst for the unknown and wants to add some spice to his/her resume, then why not hop on a plane and disappear for a year?
Students from widely different cultures and backgrounds are taking opportunities like this every day. Are you really going to tell them they have no business being in your country because they don't speak your language, or because their passport doesn't look like yours? Most foreign students, young and old, go to each other's countries legally and there's nothing wrong or threatening about it.
If at this very moment everybody who was thinking about taking a trip somewhere cancelled their travel plans, airports around the world would cease to function, cars would lose their drivers, and, this is probably the most unsettling idea, computerized and data storage systems would have no information to process.
You might as well turn the clock back hundreds of years to the Dark Ages, to a time when it really didn't make a difference whether you travelled or not because a global economy wasn't in existence yet. This is the twenty first century folks, and the economies of every nation on Earth are tightly interlinked. If people couldn't travel, our lives would grind to a halt.
Learn more about this author, Scott Hayden.
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