Asylum in the Context of Climate Change: New Challenges for International Protection.

Abstract

Climate migration is one of the most important emerging topics in legal studies; it occupies a prominent international position due to its intimate connection with human rights to safeguard environmental and human security. Given the rising climate change challenges as well as their diversity, which has become highly impactful on human life and on the stability of states, a new category of refuge has been established known as “climate asylum, which requires ensuring international protection.

The research aims to identify climate changes and their effects on the concept of the climate refugee, and to distinguish it from the environmental refugee and related concepts, including the  international law approach to climate refugees and the possibility of providing protection, given that the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol do not recognize the concept of climate refugees as one of the categories of refugees, and the absence of international legislation providing such protection has led to calls for the establishment of an international legal framework to ensure international protection for this category in the future.

The research is divided into two main sections: The first examines climate change and its impact on the emergence of the concept of climate asylum, the second section examines the position of international law regarding the treatment of climate refugees and the provision of protection for them, in addition to shedding light on the experiences of certain states in this regard. The conclusion presents several findings aimed at answering the set of questions related to the objective of the research and includes several recommendations intended to propose solutions to this crisis.