The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, ActionAid International, Coastal Association for Social Transformation Trust (COAST Trust), and the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO) hosted a side event to discuss the current realities of climate migration and how we can move towards more action and protection of climate migrants.
One speaker, Syed Aminul Hoque with COAST Trust, spoke to the current conditions of Bangladesh. They are one of the most vulnerable countries due to geographical location and hyper-population density. They also have a lot of poor people who are extremely vulnerable to climate events because they don’t have the ability to cope with distress as well as someone with money might.
Nadja Charaby with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung spoke to the gendered impacts of climate migration. Women, children, people in the LGBTQ community, the elderly and the disabled are more vulnerable during climate events. After disaster strikes, the rates of sex work, prostitution, and human trafficking go up, as do instances of domestic violence, showing that not only are women more vulnerable to climate distress but that climate distress in turn exacerbates the ways in which women can be exploited or abused.
But the major question of the night was how are governments and the international communities already involved and how can they improve? Several people spoke what has already been put in place and how those implements can be further strengthened.
Hafijul Islan Khan with the Least Developed Countries group spoke to how we are trying to change the language from climate migrants to climate-induced migrants. This distinction adds an additional level of responsibility to developed countries who have been the biggest contributors to climate change. Mr. Khan stressed that we need regional and international cooperation, as migration is not something that just happens internally within a country.
Sabine Minninger with Bread for the World spoke of two current treaties which have been written though not fully implemented. The first is the Nansen Climate Passport. This was modeled after the Nansen Passports coming after World War 1; these passports were given to people who were ‘stateless’ having no state to be a citizen of. The Nansen Climate Passport would do the same thing for those people who have had to migrate out of their state due to climate events. Nothing has come out of this proposal but it would be a great pilot to run with those who are already migrating due to climate events. The second treaty is the Global Compact for Migration. This compact was adopted in December of 2018 during an Intergovernmental Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco. While the compact was adopted by an majority of member countries, there were several of note that did not adopt it or abstained from adopting it, including the US, Poland, and Israel who didn’t adopt and Italy, Australia, Chile who abstained.
Harjeet Sing with ActionAid International spoke about the struggle with financial support for developing countries. The issue of climate-induced migration falls under the category of Loss and Damage, which doesn’t have as much money in the budget as is expected. We need developed countries to provide developing countries with money that does not have strings attached. The Global South has many solutions to these problems that they know work for their particular circumstances, they just need the money to support them; they do not need the Global North to be dictating what kind of solutions they should be working on.
Ultimately, this side event provided a lot of great information about the current language and policy regarding climate-induced migrants as well as steps we need to take to further improve and implement these actions. The concern for the rights of climate-induced migrants was clear from the passion and knowledge of each of the panelists and we as Texans of faith have a lot to think about given the current state of migrants at our border.