UN warns of consequences of climate change on stateless people

O United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today warned that the effects of climate change increase the risk of patridia and make people who no longer have nationality worldwide even more vulnerable.

“ Climate change represents an increasingly urgent crisis of protection for vulnerable people, especially stateless people and those at risk of becoming stateless people,” said Barham Salih in a statement.

According to the Internal Displacement Observatory (IDMC), an annual average of 27 million displacements was caused by weather events in the last decade.

To date, the UNHCR underlines, “nearly 90% of the 4.5 million people registered as stateless people live in countries strongly exposed to increasingly extreme weather phenomena and the progressive degradation of the environment.”.

These people, who already face “significant obstacles to exercising their rights and access to areas such as education, medical care, employment or even marriage,” are even more threatened by climate change, which makes these obstacles “more difficult to overcome, thus exacerbating exclusion and insecurity,” the agency adds.

In addition, UNHCR highlights, climate-related displacements and migrations, loss of identity documents during natural disasters, disruptions in civil registration systems and gaps in national legislation expose more people to the risk of becoming stateless.

In collaboration with the Peter McMullin Centre on Apatridia, Melbourne University, Australia, the UNHCR published a number of recommendations addressed to states.

Among the measures, it encourages States to identify displaced stateless persons in the context of climate change and to include them in climate adaptation and response planning.

States are also advised to “strengthen birth and identification registration systems, implement procedures to identify and protect stateless people in climate-related displacement situations and ensure that all affected children (...) can acquire a nationality”.

At the same time as calling for funding for this area, the UNHCR and the Peter McMullin Centre call for governments, regional organisations, civil society and development partners to “implement recommendations and ensure that national systems, climate policies and human mobility-related structures are inclusive, resilient and capable of protecting the most exposed.”.

“ These global recommendations offer governments practical guidance to preserve the right to a nationality in the face of increasing climate impacts and to ensure that stateless people are not left behind,” Barham Salih emphasized.