Environmental Migrants: Challenges and Opportunities in their Protection and Rights

Climate change and environmental stress have created unprecedented push factors that drive people to leave their countries of origins. International Migration Law (IML) protects and guarantees the rights of environmental migrants. Our project with the IOM-IML unit seeks to address the growing human mobility concerns caused by environmental factors.

In phase one, the team organized existing research conducted by IOM. In phase two, the team filled in gaps between those reports and the current situation based on recent jurisprudence, media reports and supplemental literature. In the final stage, the team updated the existing training module and developed an interactive workshop program using it. The workshop includes a facilitator presentation and guided group discussions based upon a hypothetical scenario. The target audience of this new module is IOM staff in headquarters and the field, as well as key stakeholders and member states of the UN.

The team produced the following four final deliverables that will be used in the workshop: (1) summary of challenges and opportunities for environmental migrants, (2) presentation slides for the workshop facilitator, (3) activity packet for the workshop, (4) jurisprudence excel list. These materials incorporate critical international frameworks, human rights tools, and jurisprudence, and include challenges in practice as identified by our research. During the workshop, participants are divided into two groups, asylum seekers and receiving state arbiters, a delineation that allows participants to critically engage with the guiding questions posed by the facilitator. The workshop provides participants with practical knowledge and a balanced perspective on environmental migrants.