Climate Refugees: Humanity's Unacknowledged Migration Crisis

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Margaret Seiler of Witness at the Border sits down with Amali Tower, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Refugees, a research and advocacy organization that calls for the protection of those displaced by climate change.

The latest driver of forced migration, climate change has had devastating effects throughout the Global South. Years of drought followed by back-to-back category-4 hurricanes, for example, have made the Central American region increasingly uninhabitable. 

Amali stresses the urgency: Not only is climate change an existential force that knows no borders and impacts most those who've contributed least to its cause, but the "traditional" protections afforded to refugees (aka asylum seekers) by the 1951 framework fall outside its current bounds. Though at the time considered a great advance for social justice and international human rights law, the 1951 Refugee Convention is now ill-equipped to deal with the greatest crisis of our time, Amali says.

Alongside crippling poverty, corruption, and conflict, climate change is implicated in the forced displacement of an unprecedented 273 million of the world's most vulnerable people. The tasks facing the international community are clear, particularly governments in the Global North: Stop denying climate change, and start rethinking how the 1951 Refugee Convention can be updated to respond to a world on fire.

Central American Climate Migration is a Human Security Crisis By Amali Tower

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