Exclusion of Climate Migrants from the Global Compact on Refugees

Abstract

ABSTRACT Climate change will increasingly contribute to internal and cross-border migration. Despite rising international attention on the issue, there is a long-standing legal protection gap for people displaced across borders by climate change. The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), which does not include protections for people displaced by environmental factors, perpetuates this gap. The main contribution of this article is to contextualise the lack of protections for climate migrants in the GCR as a geopolitical strategy of the Global North. Analysing UNHCR records, media publications, and statements from government officials, I show that Global North states intentionally kept climate migration out of the GCR, and have avoided obligations to climate migrants more broadly, as a strategy that is based on three factors: 1) the rise of populist nationalism, 2) the securitisation of migration, and 3) the complexity of the causal relationship between climate change and migration. To close the protection gap, I recommend a new legal category – outside of the traditional refugee status – that centres fundamental human rights rather than drivers of displacement.