Climate Change, Forced Displacement, Peace & Security: Biden Administration Actions That Ensure Rights
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2021
PRESS CONTACT
Amali Tower (info@climate-refugees.org)
Human Rights Missing at Heart of Climate Actions, says NGO Climate Refugees, in New Report to Biden Admin on Climate Displacement
(New York, NY, USA) – Today, Climate Refugees released a new policy report, “Climate Change, Forced Displacement and Peace & Security: Biden Administration Actions That Ensure Rights.” The report provides clear recommendations to the Biden administration regarding its February 2021 Executive Order on planning for the impact of climate change on migration. In advance of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA) submission of an inter-agency report to President Biden in early August 2021, Climate Refugees recommends the administration take a multi-faceted human security approach that re-focuses climate-related migration as the security of people and communities, rather than the security of states, and link fragmented climate action to the human rights and protection of marginalized populations.
“When we say climate change affects us all, we forget, but not equally, and right now we’re seeing the effects of a lack of political will and fragmented global responses, which have failed to take into account the human beings most impacted by these changes,” said Amali Tower, Climate Refugees Founder and Executive Director. “Thirty years ago, we knew climate change posed the greatest risk to migration, yet we still lack global governance to address the many disruptive effects of climate change from disaster to livelihood loss that force migration and tell us this is far more than just an environmental issue.”
The report draws in part from the experiences of Climate Refugees’ in-country and regional reporting from Africa’s Lake Chad basin, pre-travel research and expert interviews on Central America and Tower’s previous work in the US government Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and the UN Refugee Agency.
Climate Refugees strongly warns against securitizing migrants, a trend all too common around the world, which reflects the failure to recognize that climate change alone does not force migration, rather state failures to adequately address the effects of climate change, while simultaneously narrowing protection pathways like bartering foreign aid for border closings, and the most recent migrant drownings in the Mediterranean, where more than 20,000 people have died since 2014, led European countries to be rebuked for backsliding in protecting the lives and rights of refugees and migrants at sea.
As the report explains, there is an opportunity for the US to lead by resettling climate displaced populations. The global community needs to recognize that nobody wants to leave their homes, but in the absence of adequate adaptation, millions may be forced to move internally, and some even across borders. When that happens internally, protection needs will persist. When movements are forced across borders, along with those needs, protection gaps will still exist.
To download the report “Climate Change, Forced Displacement, Peace & Security: Biden Administration Actions That Ensure Rights,” click here.
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Climate Refugees is an independent, non-profit project created in 2015 to bring attention and action to help people displaced as a result of climate change, through field reports, research, and advocacy. At Climate Refugees, we believe the time has come to take bold and immediate action to ensure the international community stands ready to protect those who are forced to flee their homes or even their countries because of our changing climate.