U.S COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS
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What is Climate Migration?

April 3, 2025

In 2024, extreme weather events forced more than 800,000 people from their homes—the highest year on record. Climate-related environmental disasters are becoming only more common. Despite this mounting crisis, there remains no reliable humanitarian immigration pathway for people seeking safety from environmental disaster.

 

People forced to move because of climate-related environmental disasters lack legal avenues to immigrate

Despite the worsening climate crisis, there are no dedicated legal protections available to people forced to cross borders due to climate-related environmental disasters. As tropical cyclones, wildfires, drought, and other extreme weather events intensify, this protection gap demands urgent attention.

The type of bold action needed to protect people displaced by climate-related disasters is not without precedent.

In the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, countries affirmed the promise of ‘never again’ by signing the 1951 Refugee Convention (CSR). The CSR defines a refugee as someone outside of their country of origin who fears, on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, that they will face persecution upon return. It codifies the principle of non-refoulement: the right not to be returned to a country where one’s life is at risk. Other treaties, like the Convention Against Torture, include similar provisions.

It is possible to apply existing international legal protections to people displaced across borders by climate-related disasters. Persecution, for example, is generally understood to arise when people face serious harm, and the state fails to protect them. Climate-related environmental disasters cause serious harm. If the state does not adequately respond to this harm, individuals might qualify for international protection.

In Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand, the Human Rights Committee evaluated New Zealand’s non-refoulement obligation towards a citizen of Kiribati, a disappearing island nation. The Committee ultimately rejected that the claimant was in immediate danger. But they also concluded that, without serious state intervention to mitigate the climate emergency, climate-related events could violate an individual’s ‘right to life’ and thus trigger non-refoulement protections in the future.

While human rights advocates were widely excited by the decision, the Committee’s insistence that the claimant was not in ‘imminent’ danger exposes the importance of creating new legal avenues. People should have the right to leave well before their nation is submerged, their crops salinized, the ground razed with toxic waste.

Humanitarian immigration pathways for climate-displaced people

Countries in Latin America have paved the way in drafting a framework of dedicated legal protections for climate-displaced peoples. Argentina created a humanitarian visa for people from the region who have fled as the result of environmental disaster. Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that people displaced within the country should qualify for the same benefits as the victims of its civil war. And the 1984 Cartagena Declaration, with its expansive definition of a refugee, has been interpreted in subsequent regional meetings to include climate-displaced people under its umbrella.

In the United States, there is no visa sheltering people uprooted as the result of climate-related environmental disasters. The Climate Displaced Persons Act would provide a set number of humanitarian visas for people displaced by climate-related environmental harms, and would make the United States a leader in responding to climate-related environmental emergencies.


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