Environmental Migration and International Law: Contemporary Challenges

Abstract

In the modern world, according to available statistical data, the number of people displaced for environmental reasons is permanently increasing. This circumstance requires from the States to expand cooperation in the field of environmental migration of the population, which in turn corresponds to the determined goals of sustainable development. Nowadays, however, there is neither a universal international treaty containing definitions of the term “environmental migrant”, nor a specialized international body whose mandate extends to this category of migrants. The article shows that States do not seek to clarify the concept of the refugee contained in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, despite the potential threat of a massive influx of environmental migrants. At the same time, the latter are not given sufficient attention both in the framework of the activities of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration. The current international treaties and acts of recommendatory nature (“soft law”) apply only to persons displaced due to climate change or environmental disasters within the country, and do not address the problems associated with the international environmental migration. The author of this article makes a number of proposals regarding the content of the status of environmental migrants. These proposals can be used both international legal definition of the term “environmental migrant”, as well as the peculiarities of the international legal as part of the improvement of the existing international treaties in the field of migration, and in the process of the elaboration and adoption of the universal agreement on environmental migrants.