A clear picture is the one of the Afar refugee camp in Ethiopia. The Afar are a pastoralist group in the Horn, and many have fled the cruel Eritrean dictatorship which has undermined the resilience of these people who for centuries have been able to survive in extremely arid environments. This here (below) is a picture of the camp where the Afar now live, no water, not one strip of green. Dispossessed they now live in the desert as refugees, robbed from their livelihood and dignity.
The Refugee Convention and Climate Change
The 1951 Refugee Convention originates from the experience of dispossession, statelessness and war as a joint cause for refugees. The Convention requires governments to protect all those who are persecuted. The evolution of persecution and dispossession being linked to persecution will require further conceptualisation in the coming period. Already international law has been expanded to address environmental concerns on the basis of the human rights framework. Often these cases have also started with refugees or Internally Displaced People, who being vulnerable to exploitation, became victim of environmental negligence of the authorities.
An in-depth analysis of the settlement Ömerli in Istanbul by by researcher Farida Shaik presents the need for understanding of the inter-relations of problems:
The problems (..) are multi-factorial – economic, social, cultural, environmental. But the Turkish authorities’ approach can be typically categorised as that of “administrative rationalism”, where each symptom arising from these inter-related problems is treated as the problem itself. The Turkish context is one featuring Islamic and secular ideologies pitted against one another, and political exploitation of these differences. Corruption is also pervasive in politics and society. Each of these contextual flaws contributes to the undermining of the administrative rationalist approach to governance, and is a key determinant of policy outcomes. Planning laws exist, as do those pertaining to environmental protection, but the on-the-ground realities, as illustrated at Ömerli, are no reflection of these.3
The relationship between dispossession, marginalization and growing inequality in the context of climate change, security and military policies and refugee streams needs to be understood at local level, in regions, but also at international level.
The definition of refugees in the Geneva Convention pertains to the combination of dispossession and oppression, as a legitimate basis to receive protection. Current attempts to limit the definition of refugees to the realm of the political only violates the origin of the Refugee Convention which recognizes the multifaceted circumstances that create the kind of insecurity that motivates refugees to request protection. Europe has a responsibility to provide protection to refugees, including the current new generation of climate and conflict refugees. At the same time Europe would do well to tackle the root causes leading to the current instability.
What Europe needs to to
A symptomatic way of addressing these issues is not the way forward. In the budgets made available to address climate change and support refugees the resources are systematically taken from the development budgets. The development budgets are increasingly linked to back-stopping of immediate crises, and linked to security measures to deal with the emergencies. The example of the Ebola crisis makes this very clear. The crisis would have been dealt with if simple health clinics would have been available in rural areas. The lack of such services causes the crisis to grow out of hand and an expensive international and military operation was needed to get the crisis under control. Now that Ebola is under control the emergency organisations have moved to firefight the next crisis. Rather than firefighting, development must contribute to a social and economic fabric that is inclusive and that supports the dispossessed to find a way into society and to organise countervailing power as a way of supporting their livelihoods.
In order to facilitate this, development budgets must be maintained and it is therefore of utmost importance that climate finance remains new and additional. A similar target must be set for the support to refugees within the European Union, which should also come from new and additional finance.
The EU Lisbon Treaty rightly targets development policy to the eradication of poverty. The language of the Treaty is cognisant of the reality that dispossession and violations of human rights are linked. This is the reason that those most marginalised are the first to become victims of Climate Change related disasters. The EU and its member states must maintain development budgets, and provide new and additional Climate funding and funding to support the refugees to ensure that not only the symptoms but also root causes are addressed. This will replace the current normality of crisis to a new normality of sustainability, adaptability and stability.
The urgency of the problems in Europe is not financial or economic. Today we must ask ourselves in earnest whether refugee children will die this winter at Europe’s borders. Europe’s main problem is an erosion of the believe in its core values. The security crisis is only serving to erode these values further. The fences to isolate Greece to control the migration into Europe is deeply shameful. The ideas of a core European Schengen group does not help to build the much needed solidarity and belief in European values of inclusion, solidarity and dignity.
Fortunately the Climate Generation is waking up. The future of this planet rests on those who believe that the earth can only be saved if there is a place for everyone.
Thank you.
A. http://ens-newswire.com/2014/02/28/assad-regimes-drought-response-trigg…
B. http://ens-newswire.com/2014/02/28/assad-regimes-drought-response-trigg…
1 In 2014: http://www.vluchtelingenwerk.nl/sites/public/Vluchtelingenwerk/Cijfers/…
2 Cijfers tot en met Oktober, vluchtelingenwerk: http://www.vluchtelingenwerk.nl/feiten-cijfers/cijfers/bescherming-nede…
3 Working Paper No. 122 ISSN 1474-3280 Squatters, Bureaucrats, and politicians: Conflict between environment and development in Ömerli Watershed, Istanbul, ISTANBUL Farida Shaikh 2003 Development Planning Unit University College London