The Commonwealth comprises a significant number of states that will be affected by the migratory consequences of climate change, including a number of small island states. On 14 May the Ramphal Commission on Migration and Development heard evidence from academics about the implications of migration for the Commonwealth, exploring the possibility that migration – or certain aspects of migration – might offer the organisation a unifying theme for the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Australia in 2011. Given that climate change was the focus of the 2009 Trinidad and Tobago CHOGM, a logical next step would be to bring the states together around the relationship between climate change and migration.
However, as I argued to the Commission, it is important that the focus remains not on ‘climate refugees’ or ‘environmental displacement’ per se but rather on the broader issue of ’survival migration’, which covers the wider notion of ‘people who are outside of their country of origin because of an existential threat to which they have no access to a domestic remedy’ but who fall outside the dominant legal interpretation of ‘refugees’. (For more on the terminology muddle, see Joel Charny for Refugees International and this post at the Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog.)
Rather than trying to attribute sources of movement directly to climate change – which is both difficult and unhelpful – the concept of survival migration captures the complex interaction of environment, livelihoods and state fragility in impelling people to cross international borders in search of their most basic human rights. In that sense it encapsulates and draws together a wide range of Commonwealth concerns – from ’sinking islands’ to the displacement of Zimbabweans into other Southern African states. In theory, all survival migrants do have rights under international human rights law – which often amount to the right not to be returned home – but in reality there is no international institutional framework to ensure that those outside of the refugee definition receive access to their rights.
The Commonwealth – and CHOGM in particular – offers a highly appropriate venue within which to begin the debate about developing an institutional framework to reform the existing protection regime for refugees and survival migrants, and develop a coalition on which to base wider multilateral reform. Furthermore, survival migration offers an inclusive basis for bringing together and unifying the Commonwealth. It encapsulates issues of concern to a range of states:
- It addresses the concerns of small island states – such as the Maldives, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, who need to know that climate adaptation, and its migratory implications, are on the table at the multilateral level;
- It incorporates the need of low-lying states such as Bangladesh to ensure that temporary forms of protection are available to their populations in rapid-onset environmental disasters (e.g. see Duncan Green on the human consequences of Cyclone Alia);
- It incorporates issues related to slow onset environmental changes in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa in which drought, famine and desertification will interact with state fragility and livelihood failure to create types of displacement that fall outside the existing refugee regime;
- It places on the agenda the concerns of other states – such as the UK, New Zealand and Australia – who are committed to climate change adaptation but who, without a clear institutional response within affected regions, face the prospect of significant migratory pressure.
Already, ’survival migration’ has entered the lexicon of international organisations and NGOs such as UNHCR and MSF, and the Commonwealth offers an appropriate venue within which to develop this debate as well as serving as a means to unify member states around an issue of common concern. The next steps would be to place the issue squarely on the agenda of the Commonwealth and the next CHOGM in Perth in 2011, and from there to build a coalition around which wider international institutional reform can begin to emerge.
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An article by Alexander Betts, ‘Survival Migration: A New Protection Framework’ is forthcoming in Global Governance, August 2010.
