Dealing with international vulnerability: European law and climate-induced migrants
Résumé
Migration is a key topic in contemporary International legal literature. It includes all kinds of migration: migration induced by war, domestic violence, labour, or family ties. The topic of this chapter will be migration caused by the climate. Such climate-induced migrants might appear to be a new topic; however, there is not a month, nor a week that goes by without an article on the subject being published in the news. Such migration is ‘fashionable’-probably because climate change is likely to have an ever-greater importance in influencing migration. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Guterres, put it clearly:
Population growth. Urbanisation. Water scarcity. Food and energy insecurity. And volatile commodity prices. As we look into the future, it seems certain that these trends will increasingly interact with each other, creating the potential for increased competition and conflict over scarce natural resources. As a result, we are also likely to see growing numbers of people being displaced from one community, country and continent to another.
[...] As Chassinhighlights,thoughsuch climate-induced migrants cannot be qualified as refugees according tothe 1951 Geneva Convention, the best option at present to provide them withadequate protection is to refer to the international human rights framework.Discarding the proposed option of a dedicated international Convention, whichmight create more difficulties than solutions, because of the genuine risks ofcontradicting the existing Human Rights Conventions and aggravating the vul-nerability of the affected population, Chassin proposes to use both the ECHR andDirective 2001/55/CE to provide a first solution, even though neither text specifi-cally aims to tackle the situation of such individuals.[...]
Population growth. Urbanisation. Water scarcity. Food and energy insecurity. And volatile commodity prices. As we look into the future, it seems certain that these trends will increasingly interact with each other, creating the potential for increased competition and conflict over scarce natural resources. As a result, we are also likely to see growing numbers of people being displaced from one community, country and continent to another.
[...] As Chassinhighlights,thoughsuch climate-induced migrants cannot be qualified as refugees according tothe 1951 Geneva Convention, the best option at present to provide them withadequate protection is to refer to the international human rights framework.Discarding the proposed option of a dedicated international Convention, whichmight create more difficulties than solutions, because of the genuine risks ofcontradicting the existing Human Rights Conventions and aggravating the vul-nerability of the affected population, Chassin proposes to use both the ECHR andDirective 2001/55/CE to provide a first solution, even though neither text specifi-cally aims to tackle the situation of such individuals.[...]