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6 Transnat'l Hum. Rts. Rev. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/tranhurrv6 and id is 1 raw text is: 





A  THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE PROTECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL
REFUGEES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW




MATHIAS G. SAHINKUYE*

                                            Abstract

        This article analyzes the reality and the criteria for the legal protection of environmental refugees.
        Using  an  interdisciplinary approach, it addresses questions about the  existence, nature,
        universality, justification, and legal status of environmental refugees. Despite the lively debates
        within the community of experts and scientists specializing in migration and/or environmental
        issues, there is no consensus today on a definition of the term environmental refugees since
        1985 when it officially appeared. Several descriptions such as ecological refugees, environmental
        refugees, climate refugees, eco-refugees, climate 6vacu6, environmental migrants, displaced
        persons due to a natural disaster, environmentally displaced persons, etc. have been used without
        due regard to the still complex and little-known reality lying behind them. The debate on proper
        description has stalled, jeopardizing the legal recognition and concomitant protection. Regardless,
        over the past seventeen years, there has been  a proliferation of actions militating for the
        recognition and protection of environmental refugees. The promotion of this concept as well as its
        content raises several questions: Does the concept of environmental refugees not undermine the
        subtle edifice established by the 1951 Refugee Convention? Does it not overturn the right of
        asylum? But above all, can today's law provide protections for these refugees? Have policies
        fostered the need for protection? The paper  argues that the phenomenon  of environmental
        refugees is a timely illustration of a larger ongoing global development. It is important, in this
        regard, to rethink the environment in new ways, especially in terms of liability and providing
        legal protection to victims of environmental catastrophes. A new regime must certainly involve
        the adaptation and invention of concepts and especially the creation of new legal mechanisms
        suited to this complexity.

I.  WHILE NUMEROUS ACADEMIC STUDIES have been increasingly performed

concerning  environmental  refugee law  over the past two decades,1 there is a dearth of academic


* Senior Research Fellow, African Institute of International Law, Arusha-Tanzania; Professor of International Law
and Legal Scholarship, University of Iringa.
1 E.F. Kunz, The Refugee in flight: Kinetic models and forms of displacement (1973) 7:2 Intl Migration Rev 124;
J. Glassman, Counter-insurgency, Ecocide and the Production of Refugees: Warfare as a Tool of Modernization
(1992) 12:1 Refuge: Canada's Periodical on Refugees 27; A. Perout, Environmental Refugees: Defining
Environmental Migrants and Long Term Solutions to Deal with Environmental Migration (Master's Thesis in
Geography, Montreal: Concordia University, 1995); R. Black & M. F. Sessay, Forced Migration, Environmental
Change, and  Woodfuel Issues in the Senegal River Valley, (1997) 24 Env Conservation 251; N. Myers,
Environmental Refugees, in Population and Environment (1997) 19 J of Interdisciplinary Studies 167; R. Black,
Refugees, Environment, and  Development  (Singapore: Addison Wesley  Longman,  1998); J.B. Cooper,
Environmental Refugees: Meeting the Requirements of the Refugee Definition (1998) 6:2 NYU Env U 480; M.S.
Brooks, Environmentally Induced Migration: Beyond a Culture of Reaction (2000) 14 Geo Immigr U 855; D.C.
Bates Environmental Refugees? Classifying Human Migrations Caused by Environmental Change (2002) 23:5
Population and Environment 465-477; D. Keane, The Environmental Causes and Consequences of Migration: A
Search for the Meaning of 'Environmental Refugees' (2004) 16 Geo Int'l Envtl L Rev 209; C.M. Kozoll,
Poisoning the Well: Persecution, the Environment, and Refugee Status (2004) 15 Colo J Int'l Envtl L & Pol'y

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