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"The human rights implications of climate change displacement, in particular across international borders, are significant and truly disturbing," said the special rapporteur.
The top expert on the climate crisis at the United Nations human rights office said Tuesday that the international community must recognize that climate-related disasters including drought and sea level rise have become one the biggest drivers of displacement and ensure that the rights of people forced to leave their homes for these reasons are protected.
With 30.7 million people displaced in 2020 due to events related to weather and the climate—primarily drought, which was blamed for a famine in Madagascar and forced more than 1 million people to leave their homes in Somalia in 2021 and 2022—the global community "must realize its responsibility to protect people displaced across borders by climate change impacts," said Ian Fry, special rapporteur on human rights in the context of climate change.
Fry presented his findings about climate refugees and human rights in a thematic report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
People who are displaced due to climate-related events are at risk of violations related to their human rights to food, water, sanitation, housing, and education, and in some cases, "their basic right to life," said Fry.
Between 2014 and 2022, more than 50,000 people died while migrating, and more than half of those deaths occurred when they were traveling to or within Europe, including people who crossed the Mediterranean Sea.
Fry presented his report less than two weeks after hundreds of refugees drowned after attempting to travel to Italy via the Mediterranean in an overcrowded fishing boat. The vessel, in which about 300 of 750 passengers were from Pakistan, capsized in front of a Greek Coast Guard ship. Greek officials are now facing questions about their response to the ship when it was in crisis.
A study of migration trends by researchers in New Zealand in 2019 found that the effects of the climate crisis, including flooding and temperature extremes, are now causing migration at a higher rate than poverty or a lack of political freedom.
"The effects of climate change are becoming more severe, and the number of people displaced across international borders is rapidly increasing," said Fry in his report.
The special rapporteur called on the Human Rights Council to submit a resolution to the U.N. General Assembly to "address displacement and legal protection for people all over the world affected by the climate crisis" by developing an optional prorocol under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
"Until then," Fry said, "I urge all nations to develop national legislation to provide humanitarian visas for persons displaced across international borders due to climate change, as an interim measure."
"The human rights implications of climate change displacement, in particular across international borders, are significant and truly disturbing," he added.
Warning that more than 45 million people around the globe--but most acutely in Afghanistan, Africa, and the Middle East--are in imminent danger of starvation, the head of the United Nations World Food Program on Monday urgently appealed to political leaders, the superrich, and people in the Global North for help.
"When there's $400 trillion worth of wealth on the Earth today, shame on us that we let any child die of hunger."
"Tens of millions of people are staring into an abyss," WFP Executive Director David Beasley said in a statement. "We've got conflict, climate change, and Covid-19 driving up the numbers of the acutely hungry, and the latest data show there are now more than 45 million people marching towards the brink of starvation."
Beasley--who traveled to Afghanistan, where the WFP is increasing efforts to provide aid to 23 million people--added that "fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertilizer is more expensive, and all of this feeds into new crises like the one unfolding now in Afghanistan, as well as long-standing emergencies like Yemen and Syria."
In addition to Afghanistan, the WFP identified Yemen--where a six-year, U.S.-backed Saudi-led intervention in a civil war has caused widespread hunger--as well as war-torn Syria, Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Madagascar as the hardest-hit among 43 countries suffering food crises.
In a BBC interview Monday, Beasley--a former Republican governor of South Carolina--said that the situation in Afghanistan "is as bad as you can possibly imagine. Ninety-five percent of the people don't have enough food."
The BBC also interviewed desperate Afghans, who are bracing for an especially cold winter and who are receiving less food aid since the Taliban retook control of the country earlier this year.
"I've got nothing to give the children," said Fatema, a single mother of seven from Bamiyan in central Afghanistan. "Soon I'll have to go out and beg."
\u201cDIRECT from #Afghanistan with @BBCWorld: We are witnessing the world\u2019s humanitarian crisis in the making.\n\n23 million people marching toward starvation. 95% of Afghans don\u2019t have enough food. The economy is collapsing. Winter is coming.\n\nThis is going to be hell on earth.\u201d— David Beasley (@David Beasley) 1636377441
The WFP says families facing acute food shortages are being forced to make "devastating choices to cope with the rising hunger."
"In Madagascar, where pockets of famine are already a reality, some are being forced to eat locusts, wild leaves, or cactus to survive," the agency reports.
According to WFP, the cost of averting famine globally is $7 billion. Beasley recently noted that the 400 wealthiest Americans collectively got $1.8 trillion richer during the Covid-19 pandemic and that it would require less than 0.4% of that amount to prevent worldwide famine.
"Imagine that this was your little girl or your little boy or your grandchild about to starve to death, you would do everything you possibly could," he told BBC. "And when there's $400 trillion worth of wealth on the Earth today, shame on us that we let any child die of hunger."
Climate experts are warning the current extreme food shortage in southern Madagascar, following a dearth of rain for the last four years, has driven the country to the brink of the world's first famine driven almost entirely by the climate emergency.
"Everyone should have a safe place to live. Wealthy countries must step up and cut emissions now."
--Environmental Justice Foundation
\u201c#Madagascar is on the brink of experiencing the world's first "climate change famine".\n\nThis is unprecedented. \n\nWe are living in a #ClimateEmergency. Our leaders need to take decisive action to reverse it.\n\n#ClimateJustice https://t.co/42QxOHYI1J\u201d— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) 1629896458
In the town of Amboasary Atsimo, about 75 per cent of the population is facing severe hunger and 14,000 people are on the brink of famine.This is what the real consequences of climate change look like, and the people here have done nothing to deserve this. Nevertheless, I have seen that they are ready to take up the challenge, with our immediate and medium-term support, and get back on their feet.[...]
[T]hese people have been significantly affected by sandstorms; all of their croplands are silted up, and they cannot produce anything.
"We are in danger of seeing people who have endured the prolonged drought enter the lean season without the means to eat, without money to pay for health services, or to send their children to school, to get clean water, and even to get seeds to plant for the next agricultural season," Sanogo said. "If we don't act soon, we will face a much more severe humanitarian crisis."