Draft convention on the international status of environmentally- displaced persons

Abstract

Ecological disasters are, at their foremost, human disasters which also affect the environment. Sudden and immediate impacts as well as those more gradual or long term affect both humans and the environment, tragically confirming that humanity and the environment are "inseparable," as stated in the Rio Declaration, or "indissociable" as stated in the preamble to the March 1, 2005 french Charter of the Environment. If the effects of disasters on the environment are issues of environmental law, the effects on humans belong to human rights law, with the particularity that they concern both classic human rights and the new human rights to the environment recognized both at international level and in many national constitutions and laws. An ecological disaster brings the irreversibility of death, as well as physical injury and destruction of property. Victims usually must flee whether they wish to or not. After a factory explosion, flooding or a tsunami, the only choice is evacuation and therefore the forced departure from one's home. It is impossible to remain alongside the AZF factory in Toulouse nor in New Orleans after Katrina's passing, nor in Port-au-Prince after the Haitian earthquake of January 12, 2010. Departure is inevitable. The result is a new type of widespread population displacement, not caused by war, as in Poland and Germany in 1945, nor by civil war, as in the Congo, but by the violent effects of a disaster, whether natural (including climate change) or accidental, as with Bhopal or Chernobyl. The flight of environmental displaced persons is a manifestation of their fundamental right to life, expressed as the right to survive by fleeing.

In Support of the Debate on the Terminology Related to the Terms Climate Refugees, Climate Migrants, Environmentally Displaced Persons and Similar Terms

“…In the context of climate change, the following global agreements should also be mentioned: the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) 40 , the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (2015) 41 , the New Urban Agenda (2016) 42 , the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (2016) 43 , and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) 44 . If achieved, these agreements would reduce climate change and its impacts on health, wellbeing, migration and conflict.…”

Migraciones Climáticas: El Papel De Los Derechos Humanos Para Superar El Persistente Vacío Jurídico

“…En este sentido, en los últimos años se han venido desarrollando diferentes propuestas para superar dicho vacío jurídico 5 . Así, junto a la abundante doctrina que invita a la adaptación de los instrumentos existentes en el derecho internacional para dar cabida a la protección de los derechos de quienes migran por motivos climáticos (Cooper, 1998), también se han desarrollado varias propuestas de tratado internacional ad hoc (Hodkinson, 2011;Prieur, 2011) o de un Protocolo a la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC), de 1992 (Biermann y Boas, 2008;Gogarty, 2011). Igualmente, se han promovido otras alternativas para favorecer la protección de los migrantes En esta línea, la comunidad internacional ha comenzado a prestar cierta atención a las relaciones entre el cambio climático y las migraciones.…”