Register › Concepts › Life-limiting regime
The world outside
A legal finding about what a state does, used to govern trade and to open citizenship to people fleeing it.
Acts, never labels
A state is life-limiting if it tortures, holds people in forced labour, denies its population the minimum core while able to furnish it, suppresses assembly and expression, persecutes on a prohibited ground, holds elections that decide nothing or none at all, imprisons for opinion, or wages aggression. The finding never rests on doctrine, ideology, declared programme or name. A state calling itself socialist is examined on its acts like any other.
Who decides
The Assembly, by law, on a public and reasoned procedure, reviewed at least every three years, and reviewable by the Constitutional Court at anyone's instance.
Consequences for trade
Exchange is prohibited, except for a material or component that exists in no other state, is needed for a ranked purpose, and cannot be substituted or recovered. Each transaction needs a published licence. The Assembly may cut a particular state to humanitarian contact alone.
Consequences for people
None. A finding attaches to a government and never to its people. Anyone leaving such a state acquires citizenship on recognition, without the usual five years of residence, and holds every right in Title III from arrival. Humanitarian aid, rescue and medical supply continue with every state without exception.