Support campaign for 'climate refugee rights'
November 16, 2009
Dear Friends
Please find the below a call in this regard for your kind consideration,
you hope that you and your organization will be willing to be a
signatory on this campaign, we will keep this collection up to 15th
November 2009, then this call along with your signatures will be printed
and we will launch / circulate that in civil society and official UNFCCC
CoP 15 events at Copenhagen during 7 to 18 December 2009.
Please note that we have organized an event on climate refugee rights in
Klimaforum09 (DGI Byen, Kodybyan, near central station) Copenhagen on
11th December 10 am to 12 noon and also a photo exhibition from 9th to
16th December in the same venue.
You can be a signatory either by organization or by as a person in just
sending a mail to me or you can go to following
link;http://www.equitybd.org/English/campaign/index.html#1
Sincerely
Reza
www.equitybd.org
Climate Change Induced Forced Migrants
We call global leaders to develop a new legal instrument to ensure
social, cultural and economic rights of the climate change induced
forced migrants.
We the undersigned, the NGOs/CSOs (Non Government Organization/ Civil
Society Organization) representatives of professional groups, would like
to draw kind attention of the global leaders on the rights of the
climate change induced forced migrants, who are incorrectly termed as
‘climate refugees’ or ‘environmentally displaced persons (IDPs). The
UNFCCC, which has near universal membership, provides the common
international framework to address the causes and consequences of
climate change, without however mentioning ‘climate change induced
forced migrants’. Given the context, we are calling global leaders to
develop a new legal instrument under a Protocol under the UNFCCC to
ensure social, cultural and economic rights of the climate change
induced forced migrants. Our concerns and demand have been heightened by
the following analysis on the future flood of the climate change induced
forced migrants:
i). Climate change will significantly affect migration in three distinct
ways; i) the effects of warming and drying in some regions, ii) increase
in extreme weather events, and iii) sea level rise. All these effects
will permanently destroy extensive and highly productive low-laying
coastal areas that are home to millions of people who will have to be
relocated permanently. For instance, sea level rise is an impending
threat to the coastal areas in Bangladesh that would force physical
dislocation of more than 35 million people. Most of the Maldiveswould be
turned into sandbars, forcing 300,000 people to flee to India or Sri
Lanka. Vietnamcould lose 500,000 hectares of land in the Red River Delta
and another 2 million hectares in the Mekong Delta, displacing roughly
10 million people. In the Mediterranean, Egypt would lose at least 2
million hectares of land in the fertile Nile Delta, displacing 8–10
million people. In Guyana 600,000 people would be displaced – 80 per
cent of the population.
ii) The First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC AR1) in 1990 noted that the greatest single impact
of climate change might be on human migration. The report estimated that
by 2050, 150 million people could be displaced by climate change. More
recent studies estimates even more people to be displaced by the same
period; for instance, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in
2006 and a Christian Aid report in 2007 estimates displacement of
respectively 200 million and 250 million people by climate change by
2050. Thus, the number of future climate migration shows a ten fold
increase on today’s entire population of documented refugees and
internally displaced persons (IPDs). It would mean that by 2050 one in
every 45 people in the world would have been displaced by climate change.
iii) Although many of scholarly articles warned about future floods of
the climate change induced forced migrants but, still, no policy
measures have taken; even the terms and concepts of referring climate
change induced migrants are found dissimilar throughout the literature.
They are termed as ecological and environmental refugees, climate
refugees, climate change migrants, environmentally-induced forced
migrants etc. In this context, the office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for
Migration (IMO) have advised that the terms like ‘Climate Refugees’ or
Environmental Refugees’ have no legal basis in international refugee law
and these should be avoided in order not to undermine the international
legal regime for the protection of refugees.
iv) Considering the legal concern on the limitation of term ‘refugee’,
some international organizations are trying to treat climate change
induced forced migrants as ‘environmentally displaced person’ which is
in line with the mandates of the UNHCR’s Internally Displaced Persons
(IDPs) wherein international communities made less responsible to
mitigate the crisis. Climate induced forced migrants and IDPs falling
within the same category may undermine notion of justice to the climate
change induced migrants and, again, the definition of these two that are
not clearly recognizable may not receive appropriate
assistance.Questioning appropriateness of the terminology
‘environmentally displaced person’ or ‘Climate Refugee’ we urge that –
- Are the environmental factors only driving force of displacement and
migration?
- Are the poor countries individually capable to face the crises that
have been cumulatively build-up by the rich countries?
- Why to fit ‘climate related forced displaced persons’ to the
‘political refugees’ or to the IDPs?
- Why should inhabitants of some atolls in the Maldives and inhabitants
of the coastal areas of Bangladesh receive similar treatment as the
political refugees, which are narrowly defined under the 1951 Geneva
Convention?
vi) Climate change is a consequence of the cumulative build-up of Green
House Gases-GHGs, dating back as far as the Industrial Revolution.
Although the industrialized countries, defined as annex I countries
under the UNFCCC on climate change, have historically contributed most
of the manmade GHGs emissions but the impacts of climate change would be
distributed very unevenly and disproportionately. Those who have
contributed least to the human-induced climate change should accept all
the burden and distress. This unequal distribution of burdens of the
effect of climate changes reflected in the article 3 of the convention
(referred to as equity article).
The ongoing negotiation on this Equity Principle of UNFCCC is focusing
two major strategies to address climate change e.g. mitigation and
adaptation. Although the climate change adaptation includes wide range
of actions and activities including relocating population from the
flood-prone or from the at risk areas but, yet, it has not clearly
defined how to address the multi-causality of forced displacement
largely caused by climate change. There is a growing demand to recognize
climate change- affected populations as a ‘new’ group in need of
protection while existing legal frameworks and conventions are not
sufficient to safeguard them.
v) Considering the notion of justice to the climate change induced
migrants and also taking into consideration the article 13 of the 1948
Declaration of Human Right, the international community and especially
the United Nations must ensure protection of the forced migrants. In
line with the HR declaration and equity principle of UNFCCC a separate,
independent legal and political regime needs to be created under a
Protocol to safeguard the ‘climate change induced migrants ’. This
protocol could be drawn on widely agreed principles such as common but
differentiated responsibilities of the country Parties; also must
consider the 3 basic principles;
a) The legal debate over the issue of climate migrants must take into
account the dignity of the concerned population as their own
responsibilities for the past accumulation of GHGs are small. The people
forced to be migrated due to climate change should bestow a different
status and a different term and they should be given a dignified status
‘Universal Natural Person’ with social, cultural and economic rights,
b) The climate refugees must be treated as permanent immigrants to the
regions or countries that accept them and,
c) The climate change migrants should be tailored as entire groups of
people, such as populations of a village, cities, provinces, or even
entire nation, as in the case of small island states.
Initial Signatories (in alphabetical order) :
Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh (EquityBD)
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF)
LDC Watch
South Asia Association for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE)
Jubilee South – Asia Pacific Movement for Debt and Development (JS-APMDD)
Jubilee South/Americas
Jubilee South
Labels: Climate Change, Human rights
posted by c-info @ 7:56 AM,
