Environmentally Induced Displacement and the 1951 Refugee Convention: Pathways to Recognition
The potential for environmental degradation to cause or contribute to migration outflows raises the issue of the appropriate response by receiving states and the international community in general. As one of the primary international treaties dealing with
- PDF / 251,456 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 83 Downloads / 153 Views
Environmentally Induced Displacement and the 1951 Refugee Convention: Pathways to Recognition Bruce Burson
1 Introduction The potential for environmental degradation to cause or contribute to migration outflows raises the issue of the appropriate response by receiving states and the international community in general. As one of the primary international treaties dealing with migration, there is a need for the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the Convention) to be placed at the heart of any debate about the recognition of environmentally displaced persons. The question is, In what way? While some (Conisbee and Simms, 2003: 30) have called for the Convention to be amended to include the environmentally displaced, the chances of this happening are slim. The recent trend in refugee-receiving states in the global north1 has been towards raising barriers to entry through interdiction and truncated legal process upon arrival. Moreover, refugee-receiving states in the global south, which already bear a disproportionate burden in hosting existing refugee populations, are unlikely to agree to assuming additional responsibilities. Another way may be to use the Convention as a basis to secure a parallel international instrument covering ‘environmental refugees’ in much the same way as a parallel agreement deals with stateless persons. This chapter does not address this issue, although I broadly
B. Burson (*) Refugee Status Appeals Authority, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] This chapter is written in the author’s personal capacity. It neither does purport to represent the views of the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority or any other member thereof, nor does it purport to represent the view the author would take in any particular case. 1 Betts (2005: 4) observes In the refugee context, the ‘north’ can be regarded to comprise the industrialised thirdcountry asylum states, which are generally outside the refugees’ regions of origin. Meanwhile, the ‘south’ invariably comprises the refugee producing, transit or first asylum host states within regions of origin. T. Afifi, J. Ja¨ger (eds.), Environment, Forced Migration and Social Vulnerability, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-12416-7_1, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010
3
4
B. Burson
agree with Renaud et al. (2007: 29) that there is an urgent need for an appropriate policy response at the international level. This chapter explores a third avenue – that of possible pathways into the Convention for persons for whom environmental issues form part of the migratory ‘push’ factor. The first section considers literature on environmentally displaced persons. It delves into literature on linkages between environmental degradation, migration, and conflict, to identify potential pathways into the Convention. The second section considers the Convention’s Article 1A(2) definition in more detail – something generally absent from the literature. It identifies some jurisprudential issues that may arise in dealing with claims under
Data Loading...
