Climate Migration: Legal Protections for Those Who Flee Environmental Disaster
Satellite images of Pakistan taken one year apart.
By: Sarika Bhattacharjee; Staff Editor
On September 3, 2022, Fatima Bhutto, a Pakistani writer, authored an opinion piece in the New York Times about the climate catastrophe in Pakistan. As Bhutto states, Pakistan is experiencing unprecedented flooding, amidst a devasting and relentless monsoon season that has already affected 33 million people.
“This is climate change,” Bhutto writes. “It is relentless and furious, and this is not the worst we have seen of it.” Recent scientific findings support Bhutto’s statement—an analysis conducted by several climate scientists determined that climate change did likely intensify the monsoon rainfall in Pakistan.
While Pakistan experiences devastating rainfall, a drought ravages the Horn of Africa, putting more than 22 million people at risk of starvation.
Approximately 7.6 million people have already been displaced due to the disaster in Pakistan. Over 755,000 people have been internally displaced in Somalia this year due to its drought. As Bhutto writes of Pakistani displaced persons: “[Y]ou can call these people climate refugees. Remember that phrase. Your country will have them, too.”
As climate disasters intensify in scope and frequency, climate migration becomes increasingly more pertinent to our modern understanding of internal and external displacement. According to the UNHCR, over 21.5 million people are displaced due to climate-related events each year, and such migration occurs within national borders as well as across them. As stated by the UNHCR, since some people are displaced across national borders due to the effects of climate change, “refugee and human rights law have an important role to play” in safeguarding the rights of climate migrants.
The question naturally posed, then, is: what role does refugee and human rights law play for those who flee climate crises?
Notably, the 1951 Refugee Convention does not actually include provisions specifically targeted towards protecting those who flee environmental disasters, leading to a certain impression that the category of “climate refugees” does not actually exist in refugee law.
As for human rights law, climate migration was at issue in a case that reached the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2020: Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand. The case centered on Ioane Teitiota, a man from Kiribati who fled his homeland due to the effects of climate change and sought asylum in New Zealand. Teitiota argued that New Zealand had violated Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by denying his asylum application. The HRC disagreed.
Though the HRC’s decision may appear defeating to climate migrants, it did set forth a framework in human rights law through which the international community may be able to protect certain climate migrants in future cases. In its majority opinion, the HRC stated that the right to life under Article 6 “includes the entitlement of individuals to enjoy a life with dignity, and to be free from acts or omissions that are intended or may be expected to cause their unnatural or premature death.” The majority additionally acknowledged that “the effects of climate change in receiving States may expose individuals to a violation of their rights under [A]rticles 6 or 7 of the Covenant, thereby triggering the non-refoulment obligations of sending States.” Such words leave room in human rights law for the protection of climate migrants in specific circumstances.
Other legal pathways for safeguarding the rights of climate migrants also exist, such as the possibility of expanding the 1951 Refugee Convention to include provisions targeted to those who flee climate disasters. Additionally, certain international legal scholars have suggested implementing a new convention that would address the needs of climate migrants; their proposal is known as the Model International Mobility Convention.
Ultimately, the international legal community must make progress in ensuring that people are protected as they travel across national borders to escape environmental disasters. As the effects of climate change continue to ravage the globe and increasing numbers of people are displaced each year, international law must find a satisfying answer in refugee and human rights law to the climate refugee question.
Sarika Bhattacharjee is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. She graduated from New York University in 2021. Sarika is particularly interested in international human rights jurisprudence and legal issues surrounding migration.
As climate disasters intensify in scope and frequency, climate migration becomes increasingly more pertinent to our modern understanding of internal and external displacement. According to the UNHCR, over 21.5 million people are displaced due to climate-related events each year, and such migration occurs within national borders as well as across them. As stated by the UNHCR, since some people are displaced across national borders due to the effects of climate change, “refugee and human rights law have an important role to play” in safeguarding the rights of climate migrants.
The question naturally posed, then, is: what role does refugee and human rights law play for those who flee climate crises?
Notably, the 1951 Refugee Convention does not actually include provisions specifically targeted toward protecting those who flee environmental disasters, leading to a certain impression that the category of “climate refugees” does not actually exist in refugee law.
As for human rights law, climate migration was at issue in a case that reached the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2020: Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand. The case centered on Ioane Teitiota, a man from Kiribati who fled his homeland due to the effects of climate change and sought asylum in New Zealand. Teitiota argued that New Zealand had violated Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by denying his asylum application. The HRC disagreed.
Though the HRC’s decision may appear defeating to climate migrants, it did set forth a framework in human rights law through which the international community may be able to protect certain climate migrants in future cases. In its majority opinion, the HRC stated that right to life under Article 6 “includes the entitlement of individuals to enjoy a life with dignity, and to be free from acts or omissions that are intended or may be expected to cause their unnatural or premature death.” The majority additionally acknowledged that “the effects of climate change in receiving States may expose individuals to a violation of their rights under [A]rticles 6 or 7 of the Covenant, thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending States.” Such words leave room in human rights law for the protection of climate migrants in specific circumstances.
Other legal pathways for safeguarding the rights of climate migrants also exist, such as the possibility of expanding the 1951 Refugee Convention to include provisions targeted to those who flee climate disasters. Additionally, certain international legal scholars have suggested implementing a new convention that would address the needs of climate migrants; their proposal is known as the Model International Mobility Convention.
Ultimately, the international legal community must make progress in ensuring that people are protected as they travel across national borders to escape environmental disaster. As the effects of climate change continue to ravage the globe and increasing numbers of people are displaced each year, international law must find a satisfying answer in refugee and human rights law to the climate refugee question.
Sarika Bhattacharjee is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. She graduated from New York University in 2021. Sarika is particularly interested in international human rights jurisprudence and legal issues surrounding migration.