Andan Free Global City

Andan’s main, long-term project is the Andan Free Global City, which will completely upend and reform how we deal with the growing global refugee and migration crisis.

Today, the world is spending billions of dollars each year in dead-end, protracted refugee management with camps and urban settings that maintain precarious conditions and no perspectives for its inhabitants. This puts great strain on host communities and often creates negative reactions, leads to desperation, criminality, and in some cases breeding terrorism. We have seen desperate people crossing the sea at the risk of death. No one does that unless the situation at home is unbearable. No one chooses to be a refugee. No one wants to live 17 years, on average, in a refugee camp without any perspective for the future.

We aim at no less than completely turn around the way we look at refugees and migrants, and not just see in them people who were forced to leave their homes, are desperate and will be a problem and a burden for us. We see in them people like you and me but in another situation. We see people who are in fact focused to reconstruct their lives and their communities and highly motivated to work, contribute, and to build their future and the future of their children.

Refugees and other migrants forced to leave their homelands managed to succeed in countries like the United States, which thanks to its open immigration policies over centuries became one of the most successful nations in the world on most counts – offering migrants from around the world a new future, a new beginning. We all know the Statue of Liberty in New York and the famous words inscribed on its base, words penned in 1883:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…

Today, there is no safe country where people can easily go, and where they are welcome. What we need is again a safe harbour, a new place where refugees and other migrants forced to leave their homes receive the opportunity to live, work, study, create, start businesses, and build new lives for themselves and their families.

We need free Global Cities – autonomous, self-governed subnational entities that provide a safe environment, rule of law, and that will create wealth and prosperity for its citizens as well as for the nations hosting them. Therefore, we already have done a significant study to establish the key parameters and legal and economic ramifications. We are also actively engaged with several governments around the world, as well as with a few major investors who are prepared to finance the establishment of the first free Global City, which will also provide a decent return on capital from private investors. We are convinced that this is the model for the future given the ongoing and expanding conflicts around the globe and the increasing challenges of climate change which will lead to much larger numbers of displaced people.

A recent article in NZZ am Sonntag highlights the key aspects of Andan’s vision for free Global Cities. Please see link to article: https://www.nzz.ch/english/swiss-entrepreneur-plans-model-city-for-refugees-ld.1703647

Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

James Baldwin

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and impossible. The fact that something seems impossible shouldn't be a reason to not pursue it. That's exactly what makes it worth pursuing, where would the courage and greatness be if success was certain and there was no risk. The only true failure is shrinking away from life's challenges.

Friedrich Nietzsche