IIT-M researchers suggest ways to address cross-border migration

The researchers have suggested that all asylum seekers have to be absorbed into host countries under the principle of 'non-refoulment'

Researchers from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) and an independent scholar have suggested a normative framework to address cross-border migration due to climate change asking the host countries to absorb all asylum seekers.

Prof Sudhir C Rajan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-M and independent scholar Dr Sujatha Byravan have published a Research paper titled ‘Cross border migration on a warming planet: A policy framework’ which was published in the reputed peer-reviewed journal WIRES Climate Change.

The researchers, in their paper, have suggested that all asylum seekers have to be absorbed into host countries under the principle of 'non-refoulment'. This will ensure that refugees are not forced to return to their home countries to face harm, they said.

Rajan said the increased risks of environmental hazards including climate change, have intensified the push to migrate and referred to people living along the coast in Bangladesh migrating to the capital Dhaka due to monsoon flooding and cyclones caused by rising sea levels.

“For these residents, the worsening climate change is not a faraway threat. It is a grim reality. Climate scientists have known for more than a decade that tens of millions of people, if not more, will be forcibly displaced from some of the poorest countries as a result of climate change,” Rajan said.

If their countries are no longer viable homes through no fault of their own, the international community has a moral responsibility to provide refuge, he added.

Co-author Byravan stressed the urgent need to ensure that people from countries that have emitted very little greenhouse gases are not left fending for themselves. “Climate exiles or migrants have no legal standing. These are the kinds of issues that ought to be addressed in the climate negotiations track of Loss and Damage under non-economic losses,” she said.

The study points out that the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reports that 40.5 million people were newly displaced in 2020 and 30 million among these were forcibly displaced due to weather-related disasters.

In the study, the researchers use the term ‘climate exiles’ to designate those cross-border environmental migrants for whom the push for migration is mainly because of climate change. “There is the absence of a coherent institutional and legal framework at the international and national level to protect the rights of climate exiles. This creates an urgent need to work on international law to protect climate exiles,” the study said.

The research suggests a strong and mild approach. The strong approach says asylum seekers must be deemed worthy of refuge, even if they do not meet the narrower requirements of the Refugee Convention. “Parties who want to protect climate exiles must honour all identifiable asylum seekers under a non-refoulement principle. The host countries may choose to formulate a protocol for developing shares that are proportionate to their cumulative emissions,” it said.

The mild approach suggests identifying vulnerable zones based on scientific evidence and that asylum seeker from vulnerable zones must be given rights to free movement and absorbed in host countries, in proportion to their greenhouse gas emissions or through a similar fair agreement.