Millions of people flee because of famine or floods but should they be considered as refugees?

There are currently 12 million refugees around the world. There are approximately double that number of people who have fled because of floods, famine and other environmental disasters. There are similarities between the two groups, the most obvious being the forced nature of their flight and then their need for material assistance and permission to live somewhere else.

So should these environmental migrants be officially classified as refugees eligible to receive the same standard of international protection?

It is a debate taking place within the increasingly complex world of global migration in which millions of people are on the move daily because of a variety of military, political, social, economic and environmental factors.

UNHCR was created more than a half century ago to act on behalf of one specific group of uprooted people – refugees. They are legally defined as persons forced to flee across an international border because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.

Critics argue that times have changed in the last few decades. Many millions of environmental migrants, an estimated 20-25 million persons internally displaced within their own countries, so-called IDPs, and others, they say, should also be classified as refugees and receive the kind of legal and material assistance from the international community they would otherwise be denied.

Newspapers, officials and the general public already routinely refer to many disparate groups with the all-embracing term 'refugees' further blurring the issue. The discussion was continued recently in the pages of the journal The Ecologist.

EXPANDED DEFINITION

Andrew Simms, policy director of London's New Economics Foundation argued that the term 'persecution' should be applied not only to persons suffering political or other officially defined harassment, but also to those "forced to live in worsening poverty on land that without warning could flood, or turn to dust."

While widespread global climate change was being caused principally by the 'economic and political decisions' of powerful nations – policies pursued in full knowledge of their damaging consequences, he said, it was poor countries which were left to "clear up a problem that they had almost nothing to do with creating."

"Is it right that while some states are far more responsible for creating problems like climate change, all states should bear equal responsibility for dealing with its displaced people?" Simms asked.

While there were so many international agreements covering the rights of capital and goods to move freely across national borders, the advocate argued "No comparable effort is ongoing to protect the rights of people who have to move across borders, whatever the need driving them." In urging that UNHCR take responsibility for these people he said, "You cannot sacrifice green refugee Peter to save conventional refugee Paul."

While agreeing that the refugee agency was already involved in a limited way in environmental issues and helping internally displaced persons, UNHCR said there were fundamental differences between the two groups. Refugees could not turn to their own governments for protection because states were often the source of persecution and they therefore needed international assistance, it said, whereas environmental migrants continued to enjoy national protection whatever the state of the landscape.

"Lumping both groups together under the same heading would further cloud the issues and could undermine efforts to help and protect either group and to address the root causes of either type of displacement," UNHCR said.

The two sides agreed on one thing: many millions of migrants did need some kind of assistance. But the question remained: what organization should help and how?

Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 127: "The Environment – A Critical Time" (July 2002). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (830Kb) here or high-resolution (1.5Mb) here