A blunt reality
Rewind to 2010. Do you remember the media's images of the Haiti earthquake? Over 1.5 million people were left homeless – more than twice the population of the Norwegian capital, Oslo. Do you remember the impact of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004? An estimated 2.2 million people lost their homes, forced to live in camps, collective shelters or with host families. In 2013, Cyclone Haiyan in the Philippines also displaced four million people. More recently in Nepal, half a million people fled after the devastating earthquake.
While the global number of people displaced by slow-onset disasters like drought is not known, in 2011 some 1.3 million Somalis were internally displaced, with 290,000 people seeking refuge across international borders in the context of the Horn of Africa drought crisis and instability within Somalia.
Disaster displacement is large-scale, has devastating impacts on people and their communities, raises multiple protection concerns and dramatically undercuts hard-won development gains. In such catastrophic contexts, many people find refuge within their own country, some will be able to return home, but others may have to go abroad. All will need protection and assistance to find durable solutions and end their long, uncertain journey.
Climate change has introduced new pressures that are likely to increase such displacement. Voluntary migration will also become an important response to both extreme weather events and longer-term climate variability.
In the context of worldwide migration crises, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Andaman Sea, from Italy to Greece, France or the Americas, what can states and the international community do today to address the growing challenge of disaster displacement beyond borders?
The Nansen Initiative
During a Ministerial Meeting of United Nations Member States facilitated by UNHCR in 2011, Norway and Switzerland pledged to "cooperate with interested states, UNHCR and other relevant actors with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of such cross border movements at relevant regional and sub-regional levels, identifying best practices and developing consensus on how to assist and protect the affected people."
Based on this pledge, the Nansen Initiative was launched in 2012 with the objective of building consensus on key principles and elements to address the protection and assistance needs of persons displaced across borders in the context of disasters, including the effects of climate change.
Over three years, the Nansen Initiative held regional consultations with governments as well as the civil society from the Pacific, Central America, South America, the Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia and South Asia to build a thorough knowledge base on disaster displacement.
The Protection Agenda
The results of the regional consultations are consolidated in the Protection Agenda, an action plan for disaster displaced persons. The Agenda offers States a toolbox to better prevent and prepare for displacement before disaster strikes, but also to better respond to situations when children, women, men, and sometimes entire communities are forced to leave their homes and cross an international border.
The Agenda does not seek to reinvent the wheel, but rather to highlight a set of existing effective practices used by States and other actors in different regions of the world that could be systematised and mainstreamed by States, international and regional organisations, non-governmental organisations, and civil society.
The Agenda identifies, in particular, five priority areas for immediate action:
1. Enhancing knowledge - if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
Comprehensive and systematic data collection on why, where, when, and how people move in the context of disasters is lacking, particularly when people cross international borders. A family fleeing from their country because their house, or even their village, was destroyed by an earthquake, windstorms or flooding will not usually be recognised and registered under existing immigration categories at the border control. Therefore, tools needs to be developed that can accurately measure displacement and human mobility more generally, in disaster contexts to inform the development of public policy and operational responses for disaster displacement.
2. Turning theory into action - let's not leave books on bookshelves.
In Japan in March 2015, after months and hours of strenuous negotiations, 187 UN Member States adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, a new global plan laying out actions to reduce the impact of disasters on people's lives. For the first time in such an international framework, the Sendai Framework prominently addresses the needs of disaster displaced persons. But now it is time to turn theory into action. It is time for the real work to start, such as by appropriately integrating disaster displacement into national disaster risk reduction strategies and climate change adaptation plans, and building the resilience of communities so they can withstand the impacts of disasters and climate change, and remain safely at home.
3. Migrating with dignity – a positive way to cope with natural hazards and climate change impacts.
When living conditions deteriorate, individuals and families commonly use migration as a way to seek alternative opportunities within their country or abroad, rather than waiting until a crisis knocks at the door. Pastoralists in the Horn of Africa have long used migration as a traditional coping method to access water and grazing land in times of environmental stress. Communities living on low-lying atoll islands know that sea level rise is a reality, with many preferring to migrate abroad based on their own choice before being forced to leave. Managed properly, migration has the potential to be a positive adaptation measure that can create new livelihood opportunities, support economic development, and build the resilience of communities by allowing migrants to send back remittances and return home with new knowledge and skills.
4. Improving the way we help communities move to safer areas, before or after a disaster strikes.
For indigenous communities in Alaska, where Arctic sea ice is melting, or for people in low-lying Kiribati facing catastrophic flooding, it might soon be time to relocate. The risks of disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation have led many governments around the world to help people living in vulnerable areas move to safer areas. However, because of the many negative effects associated with past relocation processes, planned relocation is generally considered a last resort. Planned relocation should be carried out in a way that directly involves affected communities in decision making, respects their human rights, and builds on the lessons learned from other experiences.
5. Protecting people beyond borders.
People move. And when it is the only choice left, they move across a border, leaving behind their relatives, their friends, their neighbourhoods, their homes. They cross a border into a new country, a new culture, a new language, looking for a new roof, food for their children, and sometimes medical assistance. They have limited protection as they will likely not be considered refugees under international refugee law, and human rights law does not address critical issues such as their admission or rights during stay. Rather than calling for a new binding international convention on cross-border disaster-displacement, the Protection Agenda promotes the integration of existing effective practices by states and regional organisations into their own normative frameworks, adapted to their specific situations and challenges. For example, after the earthquake in Haiti, 200,000 people were admitted in the Dominican Republic and neighbouring Caribbean countries. Others were admitted in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the United States, and Canada. Similarly, back in 2011/12, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti gave access to the 290,000 persons displaced by famine in Somalia to its refugee camps. Earlier this year, Malawi opened its borders to people fleeing life-threatening floods in Mozambique. Due to the fact that Nepali citizens can freely move to India and work there, survivors of the 2015 Nepal earthquake were able to find livelihood opportunities abroad after they had lost everything. Knowledge and experience exist. Let's draw from it, work together to harmonize it, and replicate it wherever it is needed.
Knowledge and experience exist. Let’s draw from it, work together to harmonize it, and replicate it wherever it is neededProfessor WALTER KAELIN
The time is now
States from around the world will gather from 12-13 October 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland for the Nansen Initiative Global Consultation to validate the Protection Agenda and give a green light to turn theory into practice by applying its recommendations on the ground.
If everyone does their part, we can ensure together that children, women, and men who are forced to flee the impacts of disasters and the growing effects of climate change can do so with as much safety and dignity as possible. And we can give them the future they deserve.
The time is now. Let's not waste it.