Studies indicate that there could be up to 1.2 billion people forcibly on the move due to climate change mid-century. Although most displaced people will move within the borders of their own countries, becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs), or regionally to neighboring countries, many people will also be forced to cross borders in search of security and opportunities unavailable in their home countries, where their governments lack the capacity to respond adequately to climate disasters or climate change effects are so extreme that they simply make areas uninhabitable. Despite this increasingly prevalent reality and its global implications, there remains a vast gap in international law around protecting persons displaced by climate change who are forced to cross borders. Crucially, human rights frameworks can present a viable pathway for extending the scope of legal protection afforded to these climate refugees.
The below report will propose a rights-based approach for addressing the legal protection gap, which takes as its point of departure the understanding that there is no way to address climate refugeehood without recognizing the underlying human rights at play. It adopts an environmental justice perspective with respect to the common but differentiated responsibilities of Global North and South governments to take measures to implement this approach.
The central findings of the report are presented through and further discussed in light of a unique table illustrating the connections between climate change-induced displacement and violations of human rights demarcated in international and regional agreements, along with an analysis of past and ongoing legal cases centered around such connections, which draws from the Earth Refuge Legal Database.
Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia are the three most populous countries in South America and each the site of much human movement, both within and across their borders. They are also situated within a region that is home to some of the most dynamic responses to the impacts of climate change and natural disasters, including forced displacement. This piece presents three innovative policy approaches—from Argentina, a 2022 visa designed for climate-displaced people from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean; from Brazil, a humanitarian entry program offered to tens of thousands of Haitians following the 2010 earthquake; and from Colombia, a proposed piece of legislation to recognize and grant social services to internally-displaced, climate-impacted populations—and examines their common and divergent features, in an effort to draw out lessons for the rest of the world.
Migration and Climate Change in South America vis-à-vis the World
There is increasing skepticism that the existing international legal order can comprehensively or universally respond to the challenges of migration and asylum in the 21st century.[1] This situation is made worse by the ever-increasing impacts of climate change, which renders already exploited populations in the formerly colonized world all the more vulnerable to economic and physical harms, due to their disproportionate concentration in global sacrifice zones—“regions rendered dangerous and even uninhabitable owing to environmental degradation.”[2] As a result, many scholars and advocates place their hopes in domestic and regional responses to climate-induced and -related migration.[3] Such approaches have the advantage of allowing closer consultation with the people most likely to be forced to move by climate impacts—residents of countries which have contributed very little to the global carbon emissions driving their displacement.[4]
One recent example of a locally attuned approach is an agreement between Australia and Tuvalu—a low-lying island state—to allow hundreds of Tuvaluans to settle legally and permanently in Australia annually via a special visa.[5] Before the creation of this visa program, Australia and New Zealand mainly responded to rising sea levels in Oceania via labor migration programs which, at best, help residents of island nations generate funds to adapt in situ, but do little to advance climate justice.[6] The impacts of this new visa program remain to be seen,[7] but its existence provides at least an example for countries to adapt to their local and regional contexts.
Researchers have begun tracking thousands of such instruments around the world which might be used to mitigate the harms of climate-related displacement.[8] Many of these are labor visa programs, e.g., agreements between unequal partners which prioritize extracting economic utility from relatively impoverished populaces, a practice naturally subject to robust critique.[9] But more local focuses may also encompass the domestic incorporation of regional refugee treaties, such as the Cartagena Declaration,[10] or multilateral free movement agreements, such as those in place amongst hurricane-vulnerable states in the Caribbean.[11] Indeed, Latin America is home to many of the most creative responses to climate-related migration—by one count, the Americas are home to over 300 such laws and policies, most of which come from Latin America and the Caribbean.[12]
With hopes of detailing what this general trend looks like in a few concrete cases, this paper focuses on three countries—Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia—which have confronted the problem of climate-induced displacement in divergent ways. These countries were selected based on their status as the three most populous in South America and the author’s modest familiarity with their political and legal structures. While not fully representative of the region, these examples should provide useful guideposts to those seeking to understand both the promises and pitfalls of South American policy responses in this arena.
What characterizes the “South American approach” to migration in the context of climate change? According to a group of researchers associated with RESAMA—a “network of experts, researchers and practitioners working for the visibility, recognition and protection of people displaced in the context of disasters and climate change” in South America[13]—the continent is particularly vulnerable to both sudden-onset climate disasters and slower-onset flooding and drought seasons associated with the La Niña and El Niño phenomena, respectively.[14] After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti (discussed below), MERCOSUR[15] and other regional convenings began frequently debating intraregional disaster response mechanisms, conversations which have filtered down to the national level.[16] However, Yamamoto et al. still conclude that “few South American countries include human mobility as a strategic topic in their climate policies.”[17]
That said, South American immigration law is also often imbued with a flexibility that may seem foreign to readers in the United States or Europe. For instance, many countries in the region—including those studied here—grant authority to their immigration agencies to recognize “exceptional” migrant categories, and allow many people entry, on humanitarian grounds, who would not otherwise qualify for legal admission.[18] As a result, “a liberal discourse of universally welcoming all immigrants” is common in South America, even in relatively affluent countries.[19] Such discourse, however, does not always reflect reality: Acosta Arcarazo and Feline Freier, for instance, find “substantial gaps between liberal discourses and their translation into laws and policies,” such that the dream of visa-free travel and resettlement within South America remains elusive for many migrants, especially those from outside the continent.[20]
It is within this convoluted context that the three case studies below must be understood. No matter how promising they may initially appear, climate- and disaster-related entry and resettlement mechanisms cannot be divorced from the violence and racism inherent to all border regimes,[21] nor from the dismal political, social, and economic realities which often face migrants who “successfully” resettle. This paper, therefore, will attempt to maintain both optimism about burgeoning attempts in South America to tackle the problem of climate-related displacement alongside skepticism about the ability of any single intervention to deliver deep and sustainable justice for climate migrants. We begin with a novel visa program in Argentina which has yet to be utilized, then look back at a humanitarian entry program in Brazil, before examining proposed legislation in Colombia, and then put these stories in conversation with one another.
Learning the ABCs: Policy Experiments in Climate-Related Displacement
Argentina
On November 19, 2023, Argentina elected Javier Milei as president. Milei is an extreme economic libertarian—a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”—and denier of climate change who has promised radical reforms, including “dollarization” of the Argentine economy and shuttering of the central bank, to bring the country out of a devastating inflationary spiral.[22] Though there are widespread concerns about what may follow this Trump-like victory on South America’s southern tip,[23] less attention has been paid to what Milei’s hyper-nationalist vision for Argentina might mean for people seeking to move to the country. Buenos Aires is often called the “Paris of Latin America” by tourists not privy to the villas (slums) surrounding the capital,[24] home to many recent arrivals from poorer and browner neighboring countries, like Paraguay and Bolivia.[25] These migrants are often met with intense xenophobia and racism by predominantly European-descended porteños, a reality which pairs uneasily with Argentina’s (in)famous reputation as a bastion of refuge.[26]
At least on paper, though, Argentina’s liberal immigration policy has survived radical changes in government before, from the dictatorship of the 1980s, to the neoliberal turn of the 1990s, and through both right-wing and neo-Peronist rule in recent years.[27] It was during the recent, center-left administration of Alberto Fernández and Christina Kirchner that Argentina’s National Immigration Directorate (DNM)[28]—which has broad authority to issue visas and immigration regulations—took an active role in preparing the country for increased climate-related migration, consistent with Argentina’s leadership at a regional level in convenings related to this issue.[29]
Disposición No. 891/2022 was launched by DNM in May 2022, with the aim of providing humanitarian protection to residents of 23 countries in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean displaced by sudden-onset disasters.[30] This policy pairs with Disposición No. 2641/22, from October 2022, which provides the bureaucratic framework to recognize such disasters and facilitate the entry of people affected by them.[31] This program will allow beneficiaries to access housing, food, and health care for three years without paying migratory fees, if they find sponsorship from a civil society organization.[32] After three years, they will be eligible for permanent residence in Argentina.[33] Although some legal and policy experts are optimistic that this initiative could help many people,[34] there are reasons to doubt its ultimate usefulness.
To start, Argentina has not yet recognized a qualifying disaster, so no one has been admitted to the country under this scheme.[35] Though a recent policy, it is possible that this post-hoc approach to disaster response will prove insufficient. Further, the targeted countries are thousands of miles from Argentina, so would-be beneficiaries may have difficulty, in the wake of disaster, waiting to apply for uncertain benefits in a far-off nation. And—given that this policy was implemented without going through a democratic legislative process, based on humanitarian visa powers granted to DNM in 2004[36]—it remains to be seen to what degree civil society supports it in practice.
One of the architects of the policy maintains, nonetheless, that it will provide permanent resettlement opportunities for those displaced by “socio-natural” disasters, a framing which recognizes that environmental events alone do not create the conditions of instability which force people to flee.[37] He also notes that citizens of countries within MERCOSUR (roughly, South America) already have relatively easy access to residency within Argentina, hence the policy’s applicability further north, while conceding that the project struggled to find adequate financing, and involved consultation with a limited number of agencies and civic society organizations.[38]
Despite these uncertainties, Argentina’s visa program is a concrete example of what many view as the ultimate goal of climate displacement advocacy—the creation of specific pathways for climate-impacted peoples to reside legally and permanently in a new country, with sufficient social support as they integrate into society. Therefore, the extent to which Argentina’s approach lives up to this “gold standard” should prove valuable to learn from in coming years.
Brazil
On January 12, 2010, one of the worst earthquakes in human history struck Haiti, killing at least 200,000 people, with some estimates ranging north of 300,000.[39] This already devastating situation was made worse by a cholera outbreak, a mismanaged international aid response, and the destruction of critical infrastructure, which left millions displaced and hundreds of thousands seeking refuge across borders.[40]
Following the earthquake, many Haitians fled economic and political aftershocks for accessible countries like Brazil, which had built up a reputation as a safe haven for refugees from countries including Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Syria.[41] However, the arrival of many Haitians presented a challenge for Brazilian immigration and refugee law, not previously equipped to deal with such an influx.[42] This issue was “solved” in 2012 by the promulgation of Normative Resolution 97 by Brazil’s National Council of Immigration, which granted visas to Haitians for a period of five years on humanitarian grounds.[43]
These visas could eventually be obtained at any Brazilian consulate, including the Brazilian Embassy in Port-au-Prince, so long as the applicant had a valid passport, Haitian residency, and proof of a clean criminal record.[44] Having jumped through these hoops, the recipients were granted temporary documentation and work permits.[45] Why not just grant refugee status? At the time, the relevant authorities did not believe that being the victim of a natural disaster qualified.[46] Had the Haitians passed through the pre-established refugee system, they may have been provided with better social and integrative services. Instead, many of those who came, as part of Brazil’s largest immigration wave since World War II, found few jobs prospects, lived in overcrowded shelters, and faced racial discrimination and linguistic barriers.[47]
Since that initial influx of Haitians in the early 2010s, migration—both regular and irregular—from the island nation to the South American mainland has increased substantially.[48] (This partly explains the increased numbers of Haitians traveling through Central America and Mexico to arrive at the United States, a dangerous journey which often ends in brutal and racialized exclusion.[49]) It is estimated that over 50,000 Haitians have entered Brazil since the earthquake,[50] with some estimates ranging much higher.[51] Still, to this day there is no specific definition of environmental or climate migration in Brazilian legislation,[52] so the measure adopted on behalf of Haitians remains exceptional.[53]
There is, however, a law from 2017, based on the Haitian experience, allowing the Brazilian government to grant temporary visas to people facing “internal conflicts, crisis, calamities or serious and generalised human rights violations recognised as such by the Brazilian government.”[54] The decrees necessary to put this legislation into effect have not yet been drafted, however, so its future is murky,[55] even with more pro-migrant forces currently in power in Brazil.[56]
Compared with the Argentine visa, then, Brazil’s experiment with Haitian migrants has the advantage of providing an actual track record to evaluate. That record may prove to be a one-off, though, so questions remain about the replicability of Brazil’s approach from early last decade. Thankfully, there have not been any disasters on the scale of the 2010 earthquake since then, but, without a pre-defined instrument capable of responding to such events, it is far from certain that the Brazilian government would respond in a similar manner; or, indeed, if it should.
Colombia
With the Caribbean to the north, Amazon rainforest throughout its southeast, and Andean mountains in between, Colombia’s varied geography invites a wide array of climate impacts. While rapid deforestation and fire threaten the country’s rich biodiversity and rural communities further inland,[57] those along the coasts are increasingly threatened by climate-exacerbated storms and flooding, such as from Hurricane Iota, which displaced 64,000 people in 2020.[58] These climate-displaced communities are not well supported. As Vélez-Echeverri and Bustos recently wrote, following Iota’s damage to the island of Providencia, insufficient disaster response from “the Colombian government has aggravated already existing social vulnerability conditions [amongst the Indigenous Raizal people], such as the lack of public utilities provision, basic needs unmet, and systematic land dispossession by the tourist and military industries.”[59]
Colombia is no stranger to dealing with the difficulties of internal displacement: According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Colombia has faced one of the world’s most acute internal displacement situations associated with conflict and violence,” and nearly 5 million people were still internally displaced at the end of 2022.[60] Since the 2016 peace treaty between the national government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,[61] however, most new internal displacement has been due to disasters, and the Norwegian Refugee Council estimates that “nearly 800,000 Colombians are in need of humanitarian assistance as a consequence of disasters and climate change,” many of whom were previously displaced by violence.[62]
Although Colombia recently elected a left-wing presidential ticket in Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez,[63] their coalition appears to be fracturing,[64] and it is not clear whether there is political will to fulsomely respond to this escalating crisis of internal climate-related displacement. Yet a proposed bill in Colombia’s legislature would give Colombians displaced by climate effects access to housing, health services, and education, and enter them into a national register of climate-displaced people.[65] This development has generated much interest around the world from those who track climate displacement and planned relocation.[66]
Promulgated by the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance) party, the bill—which has passed the first of four required votes before becoming law[67]—aims to support the millions of Colombians who annually are forced to flee their homes for some period of time due to climate impacts like landslides, floods, and drought.[68] Capturing all of those people in a single legal definition is no enviable task; here is the bill’s attempt to do so:
Forced internal displacement due to causes associated with climate change and environmental degradation is understood as forced human mobility of a person, families or social groups who are forced to move from their territory, abandoning their place of habitual residence, family and social nucleus, their economic activity and/or means of subsistence as a result of or to avoid the effects of natural disasters or climate change.[69]
If this bill were to become law, it would still face various challenges, including acceptance by the Colombian public of climate displacement as a recognizable category for protection. Several laws and Constitutional Court decisions detail the needs and rights of people displaced by armed conflict in Colombia; there is no such social or legal precedent for climate-related displacement.[70] This approach is also unique, of course, in being the first comprehensive proposal from a national government to address domestic, rather than international, displacement. Therefore, lessons from its success or failure may prove even more potent than those from Argentina and Brazil, as the vast majority of climate-related displacement happens within national borders.[71]
Analysis
The three policy interventions laid out above represent distinct strands of response to climate-related displacement that we might expect to see—and in some cases already do see—replicated in other countries. Argentina has a policy on the books which has generated headlines, but which may prove wanting in its eventual execution. Brazil responded in dramatic fashion following a discrete disaster, but it has not as of yet committed itself to similar undertakings in the future. And Colombia has taken an important step in responding to internal displacement, yet that political story is far from told. The following subsections provide a roadmap for understanding critical overlaps and divergences in the justifications for and features of these three policies.
Justifications
Both Argentina’s and Brazil’s visa interventions were explicitly justified on humanitarian grounds. They both drew on a history of liberal immigration discourse and policy in South America, which has resulted in various domestic immigration authorities possessing broad authority to recognize “exceptional” migratory situations.[72] Under such a system, political bureaucrats are empowered to grant visas to populations that would not ordinarily qualify for easy entry—in both cases here, nationals of countries outside the South American continent—and bypass the legislature, or any public input, in doing so.
On the one hand, when it comes to facilitating policy innovations, it is preferable to have fewer bureaucratic hoops to jump through. On the other hand, there is value in democratic deliberation, and relying on the whims of a handful of officials does not provide stable footing for any policy. Further, there are reasons to doubt purely humanitarian responses to climate-related displacement. Carmen Gonzalez criticizes humanitarianism in this space for depicting “displaced persons as passive and helpless victims of natural disasters who need to be rescued by the international community as a form of charity rather than as a matter arising from common but differentiated responsibilities for climate change.”[73] This critique would presumably apply to the Australia-Tuvalu agreement described in Section I, as one example of “an ‘eco-colonial’ narrative that casts the global North as the saviour of the world’s disenfranchised.”[74] Although it is debatable to what extent Argentina and Brazil belong to the global North, they are both certainly regional hegemons, so similar skepticism vis-à-vis their humanitarian interventions may be warranted.
What other justifications might these countries have availed themselves of? The regulation creating Argentina’s visa, at least, references various of the country’s international commitments: Ratification of human rights treaties; participation in regional and global convenings including the Cartagena Process and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; and adherence to the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Secure Migration, to name a few.[75] Neither the Argentine nor the Brazilian approaches, however, appear to have justified their policies with respect to any binding international commitments. Both countries are signatories to the Cartagena Declaration and have incorporated it in domestic law.[76] Yet neither opted to classify their target populations as environmental refugees suffering from serious disturbances to public order, as some have suggested should be possible under Cartagena.[77] Brazil’s authorities even explicitly rejected this reasoning and felt compelled to seek the authority to regularize Haitian migrants elsewhere.[78] It appears in these cases, then, that international law plays a subsidiary role, perhaps providing a gloss of additional justification on top of policies which are primarily grounded in domestic law.
Colombia’s proposed law, meanwhile, seems to be justified primarily with reference to a simple fact: Climate-induced displacement is on the rise in the country, and there is no national framework for confronting this challenge.[79] Because this approach would presumably apply equally to all Colombians whenever they are displaced, there are fewer complex questions raised about why one country seeks to aid foreign nationals, or who qualifies for that assistance. Colombia is an unequal society, though, so the benefits of even this universal policy may not be felt equally. It will be interesting to see, then, whether further debates on this bill highlight the differentiated needs of groups such as the Indigenous Raizal, who are increasingly exposed to hurricanes, even as they already suffer from various human rights violations.[80]
Finally, it is worth noting which potential justifications are absent, or at least not surfaced. None of these approaches claim to be advancing “climate justice” per se, which would be an interesting rhetorical move. Yet neither do any of them stoke fear of foreigners, i.e., “the spectre of climate-displaced persons crossing en masse from South to North” which unfortunately underlies much of the discourse on climate displacement in Europe and the United States.[81] This is not to say that xenophobia is not a serious problem in Argentina and Brazil, nor that urban Colombians do not discriminate against rural, Indigenous, and afro-descendant Colombians on the move. But it is possible that histories of more welcoming immigration policies[82]—and understanding the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs)[83]—makes it such that these narratives are less salient as political justifications. Similarly, none of these policies are framed as means of extracting labor from their beneficiaries, though the Argentine and Brazilian programs both include work permits.[84]
In sum, there is remarkable consonance amongst these three case studies regarding their stated justifications. They have each been framed by their proponents as common sense, humanitarian interventions, in line with their country’s self-image. From there, though, as we turn to the content of each policy, more crucial differences emerge.
Features
This subsection compares the three approaches studied here across five dimensions: The temporal identification of qualifying disasters; responsiveness to different types of climate events; definition of their target population; provision of adequate social services; and exportability.
Pre- vs. post-hoc identification of triggering events
The Argentine visa structure depends on declarations that a sudden-onset “socio-natural” disaster which “gravely disrupt the functioning of a community or society” qualifies those impacted by it for humanitarian resettlement.[85] The Haitian regularization program was, naturally, post-hoc as well, but perhaps it would be better to classify it as “ad-hoc,” given that its approached has not yet been formalized. It may seem, then, that humanitarian visa programs require ongoing trust in host countries to judiciously identify qualifying disasters. The Australia-Tuvalu program presents a contrasting approach, however, by pre-identifying an ongoing climate harm—sea level rise—and designing a responsive program. This is closer to Colombia’s approach, insofar as that proposed law does not depend on evaluating whether discrete disasters qualify their victims for protection. However, Colombia’s must still be considered a post-hoc approach because it does not pre-define its target population based on existing location or vulnerabilities. This is a pragmatic feature of all three policies, but in each case it raises the possibility of arbitrary or discriminatory adjudication down the line.
Responsiveness to slow- vs. sudden-onset climate events
Both the Argentine and Brazilian approaches are wedded to what are traditionally recognized as natural disasters: earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and the like. The Colombian law, meanwhile, would cover displacement caused by “the effects of natural disasters or climate change,” which presumably includes more gradual climate impacts such as sea level rise, ground salination, drought, and persistent flooding.[86] This broader categorization provides a more realistic assessment of how climate change impacts human mobility, yet it invites its own complications.
First, there is the issue of social legibility: Even within one country, it is easier to explain the need to respond to destructive hurricanes than, say, cyclical crop depletion. Slower-onset impacts are also more likely to raise questions around causality, e.g., whether the displacement of farming communities has more to do with political failures and a lack of economic opportunity than direct threats to the habitability of their homes. Can cross-border policies address more gradual climate effects in a robust way (outside of dramatic circumstances, such as a nation being swallowed by the ocean)? Part of the answer may lie in the success with which Colombia is able to support populations displaced by slow-onset events.
Definition of target populations
Closely related to the two features above is the question of who qualifies for these programs. Brazil’s one-off approach is the easiest to understand, as it pre-qualified most Haitians impacted by the 2010 earthquake (subject to some restrictions, which may have still been too onerous, given the circumstances).[87] The Argentine regulations go further in describing the events they contemplate responding to: sudden-onset disasters which lead to “losses of and impacts on people, structures, the economy, and/or the environment.”[88] Yet they stop short of specifying exactly which people within those disaster zones will qualify for entry, vesting a huge amount of discretion in the hands of future immigration authorities and border agents.
By contrast, the Colombian law would focus not on the nature of the climate impact, but on its effects on people “forced to move from their territory, abandoning their place of habitual residence, family and social nucleus, their economic activity and/or means of subsistence.”[89] This is a relatively inclusive definition, but figuring out who has met these criteria may still prove difficult in practice—another reason why subjecting the policy to democratic deliberation and refinement beforehand should prove useful. Policymakers in other countries will also surely be watching for how well this definition of “climate IDP” may translate to their locales.
Provision of social services
Each of the policies studied here have offered or would offer some level of social support and integrative services to their beneficiaries, though to vastly differing degrees. The Haitians who came to Brazil often ended up in squalid conditions and, even with work permits, had little opportunity to advance.[90] One would hope that, if this approach becomes the basis for new law, its implementers will seek to remedy those past mistakes. Meanwhile, the purpose of the proposed Colombian law is to register and provide climate IDPs with housing, health services, and education.[91] Due to fiscal constraints, the Argentine program would not be as generous, but it would still allow entrants temporary access to housing, food, and health care, with assistance from outside organizations.[92] Though time will tell, Brazil’s missteps should put Argentina and other countries on alert for the risks of issuing large numbers of humanitarian visas without first establishing comprehensive social services, capable of meeting the needs of new arrivals.
Exportability to other national contexts
Argentina’s approach is peculiar in its focus on 23 countries far away from its border. Even if that visa program is utilized successfully, then, it is unclear how translatable it will be to more typical situations involving contiguous land borders. Brazil’s approach also benefited people hundreds of miles away, but it was beset by a more fundamental challenge to its replicability: It relied on a legal lacuna in which was filled, not by legislation, but by bureaucrats improvising their way through a crisis. It is unlikely many countries will view this as an inspiring model, even where there is political will to offer humanitarian entry following major disasters. Finally, Colombia’s approach cannot be said to be exportable until it has actually been implemented domestically. But its efforts to carefully define its target population, provide them with social services, and remain flexible with respect to which climate impacts qualify for assistance show the most promise of the three, and so Colombia’s approach may readily be exported to many contexts in which climate migrants—whether IDPs, refugees, or visa recipients—need greater protections.
Conclusion
The policy mechanisms studied here are but three out of hundreds that might be employed to respond to climate displacement. No policy is perfect, however, and, as the case studies here demonstrate, there are always gaps in realization, some of which evidence greater underlying injustices in the global order. Yet by studying the “ABCs” of South American approaches to climate displacement, decisionmakers may be better equipped to understand the (dis)advantages of experimenting with various innovative responses to the phenomenon, on the continent and around the world.
References
[1] See, e.g., E. Tendayi Achiume, The Fatal Flaw in International Law for Migration, 56 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 257 (2018).
[2] E. Tendayi Achiume, Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance: Ecological crisis, climate justice and racial justice, U.N. General Assembly (Oct. 25, 2022) at 3.
[3] See, e.g., Samuel Huckstep & Michael Clemens, An Omnibus Overview on Climate Change and Migration, Center for Global Development (May 9, 2023), available at https://www.cgdev.org/blog/omnibus-overview-climate-change-and-migration (“Omnibus Overview”). This paper uses the terms “climate-induced” and “climate-related” displacement interchangeably but recognizes that displacement is often multicausal.
[4] See Michael Gerrard, America is the worst polluter in the history of the world. We should let climate change refugees resettle here, Washington Post(June 25, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-the-worst-polluter-in-the-history-of-the-world-we-should-let-climate-change-refugees-resettle-here/2015/06/25/28a55238-1a9c-11e5-ab92-c75ae6ab94b5_story.html.
[5]See Jane McAdam, Australia’s offer of climate migration to Tuvalu residents is groundbreaking – and could be a lifeline across the Pacific, The Conversation (Nov. 10, 2023), https://theconversation.com/australias-offer-of-climate-migration-to-tuvalu-residents-is-groundbreaking-and-could-be-a-lifeline-across-the-pacific-217514.
[6] See Carol Farbotko, Taukiei Kitara, Olivia Dun, & Christopher Evans, A climate justice perspective on international labour migration and climate change adaptation among Tuvaluan workers, 2 Oxford Open Climate Change (2022). Admittedly, achieving “justice” when homelands are rapidly disappearing is perhaps impossible.
[7] See generally Yumna Kamel, What Does the World’s First Bilateral Climate Mobility Treaty Mean for Tuvalu?, Earth Refuge (Nov. 15, 2023), https://earthrefuge.org/what-does-the-worlds-first-bilateral-climate-mobility-treaty-mean-for-tuvalu/.
[8] See, e.g.,CLIMB Database, U.N. Network on Migration, https://migrationnetwork.un.org/climb-policy-database. One consistent shortcoming of these sorts of projects – and indeed of this paper – is that they do not grapple sufficiently with a concomitant phenomenon: The needs of those who stay following environmental devastation, either by choice or necessity. For an overview of this crucial topic, see Caroline Zickgraf, Theorizing (im)mobility in the face of environmental change, 21 Regional Environmental Change 126 (2021); Helen Adams, Why populations persist: mobility, place attachment and climate change, 37 Population and Environment 429 (2016).
[9] Carmen G. Gonzalez, Racial capitalism, climate justice, and climate displacement, 11 Oñati Socio-Legal Series 108, 125-27 (2020) (critiquing “migrant worker programs in the global North” as insufficient “means of fostering economic development and climate resilience in the global South”).
[10] Fifteen Latin American countries – including Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia – have adopted the Cartagena Declaration in their national legislation. David James Cantor, Environment, Mobility, and International Law: A New Approach in the Americas, 21 Chicago J. of Int’l L. 263, 291 n. 131 (2021). The Cartagena Declaration defines refugees as “persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.” Cartagena Declaration on Refugees § 3(3), Nov. 1984. It is thought that this inclusion of “circumstances which have seriously disturbed the public order” can or should encompass climate disasters. See Valentina Canepa & Daniela Gutierrez Escobedo, Can Regional Refugee Definitions Help Protect People Displaced by Climate Change in Latin America?, Refugees Int’l (Feb. 16, 2021), https://www.refugeesinternational.org/can-regional-refugee-definitions-help-protect-people-displaced-by-climate-change-in-latin-america/.
[11] See Ama Francis, Free Movement Agreements & Climate-Induced Migration: A Caribbean Case Study, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (Sep. 2019), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3464594.
[12] Daria Mokhnacheva, Implementing the Commitments Related to Human Mobility in the Context of Disasters, Climate Change, and Environmental Degradation, Platform on Disaster Displacement (Apr. 2022) at 23. Per this count, Africa and the Arab States have similarly high numbers (301 instruments), followed by Asia and the Pacific (259 instruments), with North America and Europe trailing far behind (88 instruments).
[13] RESAMA – South American Network for Environmental Migrations, https://www.linkedin.com/company/resama/.
[14] See Lilian Yamamoto, Diego Andreola Serraglio, & Fernanda de Salles Cavedon-Capdeville, Human mobility in the context of climate change and disasters: a South American approach, 9 Int’l J. of Climate Change Strategies & Management 65, 66 (2017).
[15] MERCOSUR, or the Southern Common Market, is both an organization and a process – led by Argentina, Brazil, and others – that promotes “business and investment opportunities through the competitive integration of national economies into the international market.” MERCOSUR in brief, https://www.mercosur.int/en/about-mercosur/mercosur-in-brief/.
[16] See Yamamoto et al., supra, n. 13at 67-68.
[17] Ibid. at 78.
[18] David James Cantor, Environment, Mobility, and International Law: A New Approach in the Americas, 21 Chicago J. of Int’l L. 263, 302-04 (2021).
[19] Diego Acosta Arcarazo & Luisa Feline Freier, Turning the immigration policy paradox upside down? Populist liberalism and discursive gaps in South America, 49 Int’l Migration Rev. 659, 659 (2015).
[20] Ibid. at 660-61.
[21] See E. Tendayi Achiume, Racial Borders, 110 The Georgetown L. J. (2022) (exploring the imperial inequities and racialized patterns of inclusion and exclusion which characterize all border systems in the neocolonial era).
[22] Jack Nicas, Natalie Alcoba, & Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Argentina Braces Itself for Its New ‘Anarcho-Capitalist’ President, N.Y. Times (Nov. 20, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/world/americas/javier-milei-argentina-trump.html.
[23]See ibid.
[24] See Luisa Rollenhagen, Should a notorious Buenos Aires slum become an official neighbourhood, The Guardian (Aug. 7, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/07/should-a-notorious-buenos-aires-slum-become-an-official-neighbourhood.
[25] See Leading countries of origin of immigrants in Argentina in 2020, statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272907/leading-countries-origin-migrants-argentina/ (showing over one million immigrants from Paraguay and Bolivia in Argentina at the turn of the decade, dwarfing all other nationalities).
[26] See, e.g., Natalie Alcoba, ‘An everyday thing’: a fatal beating reveals Argentina’s racist bias, The Guardian (Feb. 21, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/21/argentina-racism-fernando-baez-sosa-death; Uki Goñi, Time to challenge Argentina’s white European self-image, black history experts say, The Guardian (May 31, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/argentina-white-european-racism-history.
[27] See Jacob Sugarman, Argentina’s Chainsaw Massacre Election, The Nation (Nov. 21, 2023), https://www.thenation.com/article/world/argentina-president-election-javier-milei/.
[28] Acerca de la DNM, Ministerio del Interior / Migraciones, https://www.argentina.gob.ar/interior/migraciones/acerca-de-la-dnm.
[29] Policy Brief: Argentina: Leading Initiatives to Address Displacement in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change, Platform on Disaster Displacement (2022).
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] See Nina Raj, Policy Experts Discuss Argentina’s Humanitarian Visa for Displaced Migrants, The Hoya (Nov. 10, 2022), https://thehoya.com/policy-experts-discuss-argentinas-humanitarian-visa-for-displaced-migrants/.
[33] See Omnibus Overview, supra, n. 3 at 279-80.
[34] See, e.g., Raj, supra, n. 31(quoting Alte Solberg, head of the Platform on Disaster Displacement).
[35] Andrés Pérez Esquivel, Programa Especial de Visado Humanitario Ambiental, Global Compact on Refugees, https://globalcompactrefugees.org/good-practices/programa-especial-de-visado-humanitario-ambiental.
[36] Omnibus Overview, supra, n. 3 at 280.
[37] Pérez Esquivel, supra, n. 34.
[38] See ibid.
[39] Lindsey N. Kingston, Haitians Seeking Refuge in Brazil, 28 Peace R. 482, 483 (2016).
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid. at 484. Syrians were beneficiaries, in much smaller numbers, of a Brazilian program in 2013 modeled off of the Haitian experiment. See Liliana Lyra Jubilut, Camila Sombra Muiños de Andrade, & André de Lima Madureira, Humanitarian visas: building on Brazil’s experience, 53 Forced Migration Rev. 76, 76 (2016).
[43] Ibid. Recall, as with Argentina’s DNM, that Brazil’s immigration bureaucrats have the power to recognize “extraordinary” migrant categories to grant humanitarian visas. Cantor, supra, n. 17.
[44] Liliana Lyra Jubilut, Camila Sombra Muiños de Andrade, & André de Lima Madureira, Humanitarian visas: building on Brazil’s experience, 53 Forced Migration Rev. 76, 76 (2016).
[45] Ibid. at 77.
[46] Ibid. at 78. Note, however, that this was not a universal conclusion. Cantor, supra, n. 17 at 292 n. 134 (“Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru recognized some Haitians as refugees under the definitions provided by one or other of these international instruments for refugee protection, based on the rise of insecurity in Haiti resulting from the 2010 earthquake.”). And all of this creates a strong contrast with the United States which, rather than welcoming Haitians devastated by the earthquake, patrolled the Caribbean to prevent their entry. See Todd Miller, Wait-What Are US Border Patrol Agents Doing in the Dominican Republic?, The Nation (Nov. 19, 2013), https://www.thenation.com/article/wait-what-are-us-border-patrol-agents-doing-dominican-republic.
[47] Kingston, supra n. 38 at 484-85.
[48] Heloisa Harumi Miura, The Haitian Migration Flow to Brazil: Aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake, The State of Environmental Migration 149, 149-50 (2014).
[49] See Julia Craven, The Ugly History Behind Those Border Agents Chasing Haitian Migrants on Horseback, Slate (Sep. 25, 2021), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/border-patrol-horseback-haitian-migrants-del-rio.html, accord Achiume, Racial Borders, supra, n 20; see also Angélica Cházaro, The End of Deportation, 68 UCLA L. REV. 1040, 108891 (2021) (detailing disproportionate deportations faced by Black migrants in the United States).
[50] Erika Pires Ramos, Liliana Lyra Jubilut, Fernanda de Salles Cavedon-Capdeville, & Carolina de Abreu Batista Claro, Environmental migration in Brazil: Current context and systemic challenges, 5 Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Policy Brief Series (2016) at 2.
[51] See, e.g., Jubilut et al., supra, n. 43 at 77.
[52] An earthquake is not strictly a climate-related disaster. But, as noted above, the Haitian earthquake raised concerns in the region about lack of preparation for other natural disasters, and the case remains relevant in such discussions today. Yamamoto et al., supra, n. 15.
[53] Ramos et al., supra, n. 49at 4. However, Brazil’s National Policy on Climate Change does recognize the nexus between exposure to adverse climate events such as natural disasters and social vulnerabilities such as displacement. Ibid.
[54] Piacentini de Andrade, supra, n. 41 at 37. This law was drafted as part of an effort to bring Brazil’s immigration law forward from the dictatorship era when it was drafted. Miura, supra, n. 47 at 160-61.
[55] See Omnibus Overview, supra, n. 3 at 279.
[56] See Cedê Silva, Lula brings Brazil to global migration pact, The Brazilian Report (Jan. 8, 2023), https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2023/01/08/lula-back-migration-pact/
[57] See Naomi Larsson, The Unintended Tragedy of Colombia’s Peace Deal, HuffPost (July 30, 2018), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/colombia-rainforest-deforestation-lawsuit_n_5b58a5c3e4b0de86f492ab66 (reporting on increased deforestation since the 2016 peace treaty between the government and guerilla groups).
[58] Juliana Vélez-Echeverri & Camila Bustos, A Human Rights Approach to Climate-Induced Displacement: A Central American and Colombian Case Study, 31 Michigan State Int’l L. Rev. 404, 430 (2023).
[59] Ibid. at 431.
[60] Country Profile: Colombia, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (last accessed Nov. 23, 2023) https://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia.
[61] Nearly Five Years into Colombia’s Historic Peace Agreement, Unprecedented Strides in Justice Marked Alongside Lingering Violence, Experts Tell Security Council, U.N. Meetings Coverage and Press Releases (July 13, 2021), https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sc14579.doc.htm.
[62] Anastasia Moloney, Colombia’s climate migration draft law hailed as ‘life saver’, Context (May 17, 2023), https://www.context.news/climate-risks/colombias-climate-migration-draft-law-hailed-as-life-saver.
[63] See Jesús A. Rodríguez, What Colombia’s First Black VP Really Wants from the United States, Politico Mag. (Jan. 20, 2023), https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/20/colombia-vp-marquez-00078617.
[64] See Manuel Rueda, Colombia veers to the right as President Petro’s allies lose by wide margins in regional elections, AP News (Oct. 30, 2023), https://apnews.com/article/colombia-regional-elections-leftist-president-6a236eb5b8aa604807c7f06ad85d237d.
[67] María Mónica Monsalves, Colombia considers first law on climate refugees in Latin America, El País (Apr. 7, 2023), https://english-elpais-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/english.elpais.com/international/2023-04-07/colombia-considers-first-law-on-climate-refugees-in-latin-america.html.
[68] Habrá ley para atender a desplazados por la crisis climática, Alianza Verde (Nov. 25, 2022), https://www.alianzaverde.org.co/liderando-congreso/habra-ley-para-atender-a-desplazados-por-la-crisis-climatica.
[69] Monsalves, supra, n. 66.
[70] Vélez-Echeverri & Bustos, supra, n. 57 at 433.
[71] Caitlin Sturridge & Kerrie Holloway, Climate change, conflict and displacement: Five key misconceptions, Humanitarian Policy Group (Sep. 2022), https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/USAID_climate_briefing_LdMTgFy.pdf at 10 (noting that “overwhelmingly, people displaced by conflict and climate change undertake predominantly short-distance movements, often from rural to urban settings within national borders”).
[72] Cantor, supra, n. 17.
[73] Gonzalez, supra, n. 8 at 124.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Text of Disposición 891/2022, Dirección Nacional De Migraciones (May 19, 2022), https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/disposici%C3%B3n-891-2022-364999/texto.
[76] See supra, n. 9.
[77] See ibid.
[78] See supra, n. 45.
[79] See Alianza Verde, supra, n. 67.
[80] See Vélez-Echeverri & Bustos, supra, n. 57 at 430-33.
[81] Gonzalez, supra, n. 8 at 122.
[82] See Arcarazo & Luisa Feline Freier, supra, n. 18 at 659.
[83] See Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, supra, n. 59.
[84] Query whether any such program can exist without economic integration (if not exploitation) as an unspoken goal.
[85] Text of Disposición 2641/2022, Dirección Nacional De Migraciones (Oct. 25, 2022), https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/disposici%C3%B3n-2641-2022-373774/texto.
[86] Monsalves, supra, n. 66.
[87] See Jubilut et al., supra, n. 46.
[88] Dirección Nacional De Migraciones, supra, n. 83.
In the summer of 2021, Western Europe experienced some of the worst flooding in decades. It caused tragic loss of life and widespread destruction across Europe, with its effects felt in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The catastrophic floods were especially powerful in Germany, where 180 people died, 700 were injured, and at the time of writing, 73 people are still missing. Preliminary calculations by German insurance companies suggest that there has been a cost to the economy of 4.5 – 5.5. billion euros, for damage to insured property alone.[1]
Whilst these events are both heart-breaking in their impact on people’s lives, and shocking in their unprecedented nature, this is but one notable example in Western Europe of a trend that has been occurring in other parts of the world for decades, leading to displacement and devastation across the globe. By examining the impact of flooding in the Ahrtal, Germany, scientists have uncovered additional compelling evidence in support of the human-induced contributions to the worsening of natural disasters.
The Ahrtal in Germany – an idyllic region often known for its local wineries and a popular tourist spot for hikers – was and continues to be one of the worst affected regions. At the height of the floods, it is estimated that approximately 90 litres of rain per square meter were falling into the regions around the rivers Ahr and Erft daily, more than any rainfall pattern noted in weather records so far[2].
Can explanations be found for these unprecedented events?
One of the factors predisposing the Ahrtal to flooding is the geography of the region: some valley sections create a funnel effect in the event of extreme floods due to the narrow nature and steep slopes. However, that does not necessarily encompass the full explanation for this catastrophe, which is estimated to be a once in 500-year event, or even rarer according to a study conducted by an international group of scientists from across Europe and the US.[3]
It was also found that human-induced climate change altered both the likelihood and intensity of the heavy rainfall which caused the severe flooding in Western Europe. In other words, not only has human induced climate change made the chances of such flooding happening greater, but it has also led to a worsening of the severity of heavy rainfall events. The study assessed general data from 1-day and 2-day rainfall events separately, and this disaggregation helped to analyse the changes in rainfall duration over the past decades.
The research group landed on three key findings. Firstly, they were able to demonstrate that rising temperatures have made flooding itself worse – climate changed increased the intensity of the rainfall event by about “3 – 19% compared to a global climate 1.2 °C cooler than today”. They also showed that climate change has made the probability of such an event occurring far higher – the likelihood of flooding has increased by a factor of between 1.2-9 compared to a pre-industrial climate. The study also looked at what would happen if the global temperature would continue to increase, up until 2°C warmer than pre-industrial times. Worryingly, the study found that these trends in severity and likelihood would continue to worsen along this predicted trajectory[4].
Though research demonstrating the harms of climate change and global warming already exists, environmental politics within Europe have been slow to change. However, this study based in Western Europe itself, tangibly links climate change to catastrophic effects on people’s livelihoods, and demonstrates its influence in causing huge displacement issues. Though it is unfortunate that governments have in the past not been willing to mobilise when such displacements are occur in far-off countries, it seems possible that in the face of such local impact, this study may succeed where others have failed in galvanizing European action.
The climate crisis as a crisis of global displacement
Due to the extreme floods, and the long-term effects that they had, the residents of the Ahrtal were severely displaced, both in the long and short-term. Whilst volunteering in the Ahrtal, reconstructing a destroyed house which belonged to a local police chief, I heard examples of the displacement which so many were forced to face after their houses were swept away by the floods or ripped down by the authorities due to extreme flooding damage.
One couple explained how their children had to start the new school year in a new region, living with their grandparents, because their own house cannot be lived in, and the school building had also been damaged. This is just one of many examples of the displacement and disruption the residents of the Ahrtal have had to manage. Moreover, ever since the initial, immediate displacement caused by the loss of their home, the residents have continued to experience long-term issues.
Even 3 months after the catastrophe, residents continue feel the ramifications of the disaster. For example, in the city of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, citizens are left without gas and heating, a challenge that could persist until the winter. Currently, 150 people are still lacking access to these basic services, and others are already living in emergency shelters supplied in the form of containers[5]. The long-term displacement and consequences are often invisible, overlooked as the media turns its attention elsewhere.
There has been widespread disappointment amongst residents with the way the disaster has been handled, not only in terms of the lack of alarm and warning residents received[6], but also in terms of organization after the crisis. One local describes how all of fundraising activities and donations have been organized privately, and there is a palpable feeling of having been let down by the government amongst the affected community. Politicians have expressed their horror and have vowed to fight climate change, with German environment minister Svenja Schulze stating that the recent floods are “the consequences of procrastination and hesitation” in fighting climate change.[7] However, one must be cautious in their optimism in believing meaningful policy change will occur, as these statements were overshadowed by rhetoric surrounding the recent national election in September 2021.
These catastrophes, however, are not new to some developing countries, but a wakeup call only for Western nations. Unfortunately, developing nations such as Bangladesh, countries in the Sahel region and island-nations such as the Maldives, have experienced extreme weather changes and increasing frequency of natural disasters. The question remains if the recent flooding will wake up western nations now that there have been climate-induced disasters and climate induced displacement on their doorstep.
Johanna Wassong is a final year International Relations student at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, specializing in human rights and refugee rights in sub–Saharan Africa. She is currently writing her dissertation on refugee politics following the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Johanna initially started working with refugees in her hometown of Cologne, Germany during the so-called Refugee Crisis of 2015, and was specifically confronted with the issues of environmental migration after the 2021 summer floodings in the Ahrtal.
References
[1] Bundeszentrale Bildung, “Jahrhunderthochwasser 2021 In Deutschland | Bpb”, Bpb.De, 2021, https://www.bpb.de/politik/hintergrund-aktuell/337277/jahrhunderthochwasser-2021-in-deutschland.
[2] David Young, “Klimawandel, Flut An Ahr Und Erft – Und Die Frage Nach Dem Verschulden”, Deutschlandfunk, 2021, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/studie-zeigt-zusammenhang-klimawandel-flut-an-ahr-und-erft.2897.de.html?dram:article_id=501936.
[3]“Heavy Rainfall Which Led To Severe Flooding In Western Europe Made More Likely By Climate Change – World Weather Attribution”, Worldweatherattribution.Org, 2021, https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/heavy-rainfall-which-led-to-severe-flooding-in-western-europe-made-more-likely-by-climate-change/.
[6] Deutsche Welle, “Germany Ponders Lessons From Deadly Floods — As It Happened”, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-ponders-lessons-from-deadly-floods-as-it-happened/a-58311369.
[7] David Ehl, “The Climate Crisis Can’t Be Stopped, We Must Adapt”, Deutsche Welle, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-the-climate-crisis-cant-be-stopped-we-must-adapt/a-58294704.
Climate change is forcing the displacement of people, both within states (i.e., internally displaced persons or ‘IDPs’) and beyond borders (i.e., climate change-forced migrants). According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (‘UNHCR’), as of 22 April 2021, climate change has triggered more than twice as much displacement than conflict has in the last decade.[i] Since 2010, weather emergencies have caused an average of 21.5 million people to move per year.[ii] The International Panel for Climate Change (‘IPCC’) recently found that climate change exasperates gender inequalities and women are less likely to have equal rights and access to resources.[iii] These inequalities appear to result in women being more likely to be displaced than men, and it has been reported that women represent 80% of people displaced by climate change globally.[iv]
Research is showing that this increase in displacement has a direct effect on the rise of modern slavery. Although each year more traffickers are being brought to justice,[v] modern slavery still presents serious cause for concern, particularly when contemplating an increase in vulnerability as people are affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflict amongst other factors. Migrants account for a considerable share of detected victims globally as they are often marginalised and impoverished, and therefore preyed upon by traffickers.[vi]
The aim of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between climate change and sex trafficing – specifically with regard to women. The experiences of children will also be included where possible. The experiences of non-binary victims have not been included due to a current lack of data which needs to be addressed in future research. The paper also aims to highlight recent migration and pollution trends in order to give an overview of who is being affected and where accountability should lie. Sex trafficking is examined as opposed to other forms of exploitation, such as forced labour (including domestic servitude), organ harvesting, forced adoption, or forced criminality. This is due to the fact that, according to data gathered about detected victims, the majority of modern slavery cases constitute sexual exploitation. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (‘UNODC’) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020 records that 50% of those detected were trafficked for sexual exploitation, 38% were trafficked for forced labour, 6% were forced into criminality, and just over 1% were forced to beg. Smaller numbers were reported for people trafficked for the purposes of forced marriages, organ removals, and other types of exploitation.[vii]
Women and girls are the focus of this paper as they continue to be the most affected demographic. The UNODC recorded that in 2018, for every 10 victims globally, about five were adult women and two were girls.[viii] The International Labour Organization (‘ILO’) also recorded that in 2017, women and girls accounted for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry.[ix]
Climate change and women
Forced migration as the result of climate change has risen in the last decade and is projected to continue rising. Some states are large enough geographically that governments can move citizens to areas of the country that are not as affected by climate change yet- such as away from coast lines for example. However, to do this people are often placed in camps, thus becoming internally displaced persons. Although this means that they still have recognised rights from their governments, IDPs are often more vulnerable than non-displaced persons due to the fact that they may have to inhabit camps with poor sanitation, limited access to clean water and food, higher rates of disease, and sometimes social and economic exclusion.
A study on internal displacement camps in Northern Uganda showed that placing people into these camps hampers the rights provided by citizenship as people do not always have their basic needs met, such as access to adequate healthcare facilities.[x] Moreover, climate change can put stress on national infrastructures and limit access to land which can cause food insecurity. It is not uncommon for IDPs in internal camps to suffer from food shortages.
Other states, including low-lying Small Island States (‘SIDS’)- such as Kiribati and the Maldives, do not have the capacity to internally protect all displaced citizens.[xi] Consequently, many are forced to cross state borders due to adverse weather caused by climate change. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol (‘the Refugee Convention’) do not currently recognise climate change as a ground for claiming refugee status.[xii] A refugee is legally defined as a person who is ‘unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’. The 1967 Protocol removes the temporal and geographical limitations of the Convention’s definition.[xiii]
The 1951 Refugee Convention was drafted because of people who were displaced due to World War Two and so only applied to people displaced due to events that occurred before the 1st of January 1951 and state parties could choose to restrict its application to only cover Europe. The Protocol removes these limitations so that the Refugee Convention can be applied globally and for events up to present day.
This lack of legal protection for those who are forced to cross borders due to hazardous weather caused by climate change are often from countries that contribute the least to climate change and may already have been vulnerable to poverty- for example, SIDS according to 2019 data, made up seven of the ten countries globally that face the highest risk of internal displacement from extreme weather events but SIDS per capita emissions are around a third of those from high-income countries.[xiv] C02 emissions are of particular concern as the IPCC identified that Green House Gases (GHGs) are the main anthropogenic contribution to climate change, with the main gas being CO2[xv]. According to data from 2018 published by the World Bank, the ten countries that produce the highest level of CO2 emissions are as follows:
China (10,313,460 kt);
United States (4,981,300 kt);
India (2,434,520 kt);
Russian Federation (1,607,550 kt);
Japan (1,106,150 kt);
Germany (709,540 kt);
Republic of Korea (630, 870 kt);
Islamic Republic of Iran (629,290 kt);
Indonesia (583,110 kt); and
Canada (574,400 kt).
These countries are typically considered to be ‘developed’ and therefore better equipped to respond to adverse weather conditions. It seems that this group of states should be held accountable if forced migration from climate change is to be prevented- this would also follow the ‘polluter pays’ principle wherein those who produce pollution should bear the responsibility of managing it to prevent damage to the environment. Many of the countries that appeared to produce the lowest number of CO2 were SIDS such as the Seychelles (620); Sao Tome and Principe (140); Samoa (320); Palau (290); Nauru (70); the Federated States of Micronesia (180); the Marshall Islands (190) and Kiribati (80) amongst others.[xvi] As aforementioned, SIDS often contribute the least to carbon emissions but are the group of states that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Research in this area shows that it is women and girls who appear more at risk of displacement due to climate change, particularly those who live in developing countries.[xvii] This is likely due to pre-existing gender inequalities that render women and girls to have less access to resources, including land. Following floods, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather events, food can be scarce as crops can be destroyed and agricultural land can be in left in conditions that make it difficult to cultivate food in adequate quantities. Women and girls being denied access to land can then be another barrier in them being able to grow food so this coupled with devastation from extreme weather means that women and girls are disproportionally affected.
Data from the United Nations shows that women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor, and their livelihood is also more dependent upon the natural resources that are threatened by these changes.[xviii] They also are more likely to face economic, social, and political barriers as a result of existing gender inequalities which limit their ability to access resources and cope with the effects of climate change, making them less likely to be involved in any decision-making processes.[xix]
Sex trafficking and women
The 2016 UNODC Global Report found that when using data that was disaggregated by gender, it was clear that women and girls are usually trafficked for marriage and sexual slavery, whereas men and boys are often trafficked for forced labour.[xx] There are several societal reasons for this gender inequality. For example, women are disproportionally affected by poverty as they are often excluded from economic and educational resources and opportunities- research shows that women are generally paid less than men are, many women are in the informal economy which means they are not likely to have secure employment contracts and are not always paid enough to get out of poverty. This same research also shows that women do at least twice as much unpaid care work as men do.[xxi] On top of being unpaid this gives them less opportunity to engage in paid work. Traffickers prey on poorer individuals who are in need of an income to survive and may not recognise the signs of exploitation until it is too late. In many societies women have been treated as unequal to men and have been sexualised or objectified, and their societal ‘value’ is perceived to be lesser than that of men.
Although the Refugee Convention does not require State Parties to legally recognise forced migration from climate change as grounds for refugee status, Article 6 of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (“CEDAW”) stipulates that State Parties “shall take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women”.[xxii] It can therefore be argued that due to the link between climate change forced migration and sex trafficking in women and girls, the latter should be tackled by reducing and preventing climate change forced migration in order to mitigate the vulnerability exploited by traffickers.
Of the top CO2 producing countries listed above, eight have signed and ratified CEDAW. The United States of America has signed the treaty but is yet to ratify. Iran ratified the treaty in 2003 but this was later vetoed by the Guardian Council. This means that the majority has acknowledged their responsibility to take all appropriate measures including the implementation of legislation that protects women and girls from sexual exploitation and although some progress is being made this does not appear to be happening effectively enough to protect women and girls.
Conclusions
It is clear, therefore, that as the result of existing gender inequalities and vulnerabilities, women and girls are most affected by climate displacement globally. This renders them more susceptible to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The main solution for preventing women and girls being so vulnerable would be to achieve economic and social gender equality. However, this is obviously a long-term aim. More short-term solutions could include increasing economic opportunities for women and girls such as providing education, vocational training, and apprenticeships. The dissemination of information to women and girls on their rights and on sexual exploitation could help them recognise signs of coercion and give them avenues in which to report it. This could include information on rights and signs of exploitation at displacement camps, information on the legitimacy of overseas ‘job’ opportunities, and the visitation of displacement camps by qualified people such as aid workers and governmental officials. The equal employment of women in such positions as well as in law enforcement and border officials could help women and girls to feel safe to report sexual exploitation. The accountability of states that contribute the most to climate change needs to be examined in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Tackling the causes of climate change could help mitigate one area where women and girls are disproportionally affected. The accountability of the traffickers also needs to be addressed more as this is often lacking in research conducted on sexual exploitation. Efforts could be made to target key areas to ascertain exploitation networks by identifying states that are affected the most by extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. Looking at routes that displaced people take and monitoring these as well as migrant camps could help protect people whilst also maintaining surveillance for perpetrators. Cross-border cooperation would also be advantageous for the identifying of perpetrators- as forced migration and sex trafficking often involves crossing state borders then communication between states is key.
Rebecca Allen obtained her MA in Human Rights from UCL. Her dissertation looked at displacement from climate change, the accountability of governments, and the role of advocacy networks. She now works as a researcher. Her main areas of interest are climate change, displacement, modern slavery, and the effects of conflict upon civilians.
She is passionate about using her research to bring attention to marginalised groups and the need for policy change to protect the rights of people in vulnerable situations.
[v] UNODC, ‘Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020’(United Nations, January 2021). Since 2003, the number of those convicted per 100,000 people has nearly tripled.
[x] M. Oosterom, ‘Internal Displacement, the Camp and the Construction of Citizenship: Perspectives from Northern Uganda’, (2016) 29(3) Journal of Refugee Studies.
[xi] Data from 2016 showed that China, the Philippines, and India had the highest number of internally displaced persons from disaster. However, these states have more capacity for moving citizens internally but it is small island states that are disproportionally affected. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, ‘Global Report on Internal Displacement’, (2017), <http://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2017/>.
[xii] In Ioane Teitiota v. The Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (New Zealand Supreme Court, 2015),the Court rejected the claimant as a ‘climate change refugee’ on the basis of lack of legal recognition of climate change as grounds for refugee status.
[xiii] Refugee Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol (1951), United Nations.
[xiv] Oxfam, ‘Forced from Home: Climate-fuelled Displacement’, 2019.
“It’s an act of sabotage on our future, a reckless and totally irresponsible act.”[i]
Such was the reaction of climate official Ian Fry, from the tiny South Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, to Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and represents the first instrument in international law to contain legally binding greenhouse gas limitation and reduction commitments for industrialized countries. As such, Canada’s withdrawal from this legal milestone not only directly worsens the situation of threatened states such as Tuvalu through its apparently intended increase in greenhouse gas emissions, but also sends an ominous signal to the rest of the world, potentially opening the door for other states to follow suit.
Tuvalu is one of the countries suffering the most from the consequences of climate change. Rising sea levels are causing the erosion of ever larger coastal areas of the island nation’s low-lying atolls (coral reefs).Groundwater is becoming saline, threatening both food crops and drinking water supplies, and the increasing number of storms is destroying vital infrastructure in the country. Thus, Fry’s statement can be understood as an example of a global trend: the consequences of climate change are increasingly being recognized as a massive threat to peace for more and more states.
Examples of possible sources of conflict arising from climate change include the struggle for resources[ii], food scarcity[iii], and forced migration, with estimates for the year 2050 ranging from 200 million[iv] to 1 billion[v] climate refugees. The view that not only the consequences, but also the underlying causes of climate change, can be perceived as a threat to peace in their own right, seems set to gain acceptance.[vi] And these very causes of climate change can, in turn, often be clearly attributed to the actions of certain states.
Based on this extremely limited introduction, it becomes important to consider the question of whether states whose citizens, economies, and cultures suffer particularly severely from the consequences of man-made climate change may, under certain conditions, resort to the use of force against the polluter states.
In what situations might the use of force in the name of climate change be legal?
There are two possible scenarios under which the use of force may be legal: in the name of self-defense, or with the permission of the UN Security Council.
Regarding self-defense, Article 51 of the UN Charter (1945) states an “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against [themselves or another] Member of the United Nations”. If this is interpreted literally, the legality of the use of force against “climate rogue states”[vii] can already be ruled out. Without wanting to belittle the threat of heavy Green House Gas (GHG)-emissions, this is definitely a different kind of threat than ‘an armed attack’.
However, if one takes the commonly accepted requirements of the so-called ‘Caroline Test’, a closer look is worthwhile. The Caroline Test lists a number of criteria that must be met for the right to practice self-defense. In the original formulation of this test (Webster, 1841) it says that, “a use of force can [only] be admissible if there is ‘a necessity of self-defence, instant, over-whelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation’. Moreover, ‘the act, justified by the necessity of self-defence, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it’.”[viii] In essence, this test argues that the two key requirements to justify the use of force in self-defence are ‘necessity’ and ‘proportionality’. While ‘proportionality’ determines the intensity of force that may be used, the requirement for ‘necessity’ determines whether a resort to the use of force is permissible at all. Thus, the necessity criterion is more interesting for us at this point.
Especially given the Test’s requirement for a threat to be ‘instant [and] over-whelming’, it would seem, given that GHG emissions don’t instantly affect populations, that the necessity criterion cannot be fulfilled. The reality is that many of the harmful effects of climate change take years or decades to come to light, and the delayed effects of emitted GHGs make it extremely difficult to attribute a specific consequence of climate change to a specific state. Thus, at least in the current state of climate change, under this framework it would be argued that states do have the time and therefore possibility to choose other means than force, which in turn must always be a last resort[ix]. In summary, then, “[u]nless the global climate was at a tipping point, and the attacking state or coalition knew it, the imminence of the threat implied by necessity would be absent.”[x]
Instead, the justification for a military strike against GHG-emitting facilities through anticipatory self-defense seems more realistic. This is because such a military strike would involve the pre-emptive thwarting of probable harm emanating from a state which is either unwilling or unable to stop this harm from happening, just as the theory of anticipatory self-defense states. However, the application of this particular variety of self-defense is highly controversial. Many scholars believe “that the pre-emptive use of force against emerging threat(s) is unauthorised under existing legal framework.”[xi]
As such, the use of force against climate rogue states cannot be justified on the basis of Article 51 of the UN Charter as acts of self-defense, at least for the time being. The other alternative for nations to legitimize a resort to use of force would be by being granted permission from the UN Security Council (UNSC). As a first step in this respect “[t]he Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”[xii] This type of determination of threats to global peace is usually expressed in a UNSC resolution. Such resolutions not only officially determine that the situation in question is a legitimate threat to the peace, but also provide recommendations or decisions regarding “what measures shall be taken […] to maintain or restore international peace and security”.[xiii] Article 41 of the UN Charter lists a number of peaceful means by which the identified threat to peace shall be overcome. However, if these peaceful means were deemed by the UNSC to either have failed or to be inadequate, the resort to the use of force would be possible[xiv].
Because such a UNSC resolution does not exist as of today[xv], it would be tempting to dismiss this approach as irrelevant. However, this would be too simplistic. In general, the UNSC has an obligation to determine threats to peace[xvi]. A glance at the past shows that this can also involve categories of illicit conduct other than classic, direct violations of the sovereignty of states. In 1992, for example, the UNSC confirmed that “[t]he absence of war and military conflicts among States does not in itself ensure international peace and security. The non-military sources of instability in the economic, social, humanitarian and ecological fields have become threats to peace and security.”[xvii] Thus, it is by no means impossible that calls for climate change to be classified as a threat to peace[xviii] will be heard. And indeed, there have been repeated shifts in this direction in the recent past.
The UNSC, for example, “has held four open debates specifically on climate security risks”[xix] already. At the most recent of these open debates, climate change was unanimously referred to as a ‘threat multiplier’[xx], but no agreement could be reached on a classification as a threat to peace itself. Since two or three of the five permanent members with veto power in the UNSC, China and Russia, and in recent years also Trump’s USA, have taken the politically motivated stance that “[i]n fact, qualifying climate change as a threat to the peace was, in their view, neither ‘right’ nor beneficial”[xxi], this classification is not to be expected in the near future.
How might this change in the future?
Nevertheless, should climate change be classified as a threat to peace at some point, the whole situation could possibly change very quickly. The effectiveness of peaceful means can already be doubted from today’s point of view, since neither the Kyoto Protocol nor the Paris Agreement can be considered to have effectively halted climate change and GHG emissions[xxii]. Were a Security Council resolution to be passed, it could open the door for the use of force against climate rogue states. For very practical reasons, however, it must be asked at this point whether this would actually be effective, either in combating climate change, or in furthering and protecting human rights at all. If a tiny state like the aforementioned Tuvalu suddenly had the theoretical right to take military action against a large country like Canada, it would still lack the means to do so. Thus, the jus ad bellum wartime principle of ‘probability of success’, in contrast to the other principles[xxiii], could not be fulfilled under any circumstances[xxiv]. The principle of ‘probability of success’ states that war can only be justified if such violence has a real chance of changing the causal grievance in the long run. If Tuvalu is now apparently justified in using force against Canada due to changed conditions, there is still the question of how it should win this war. Tuvalu does not have an army, and if one were to be created, it would almost certainly not be able to take on the Canadian army. A tiny country like Tuvalu trying to take military action against a superpower like Canada is likely to cause harm and loss of life, but has very little chance of bringing about change.
From this point of view, the proportionality of military action is also highly questionable. Because the principle of proportionality prohibits any “attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”[xxv] The invoking of the right to collective self-defense could provide a remedy[xxvi]. Going beyond this, the question may even arise, “[i]f a state pursues or allows very damaging activities that harm its own population or the international community as a whole through climate change, would it be legal to use force to stop those activities in the name of humanitarian intervention or the Responsibility to Protect [R2P]?”[xxvii]. However, this would only be possible if the UNSC classified the consequences of climate change as a mass atrocity crime[xxviii]. Additionally, the status of R2P is also controversial[xxix].
Conclusion
The scope of this paper could only provide a very rough framework. Nevertheless, it was possible to show why there is currently no legal resort to the use of force against climate rogue states and under what circumstances this assessment could change in the future. In addition to these findings themselves, however, it is momentous that such deliberations are taking place at all. Of course, no one wants to see countries become violent in the name of climate change, nor to see the devastation of communities, cultures and infrastructure that comes with war and violence. That the use of force is even being discussed is testament to the fact that there is still no actual, reliable way of holding states accountable for their international climate responsibilities. Countries and ecosystems around the world are at a breaking point, and in the not-too-distant future, the progress of climate change could lead to an even more frightening scenario.
Given that climate change is already triggering violence today, as destroyed homes or impeded access to drinking water might cause people in hardship to resort to violence in order to ensure their survival. If those states, whose citizens are worst affected, in their desperation see no other way out than using force against climate rogue states to stop them from causing further harm, we could see a rapid downturn into a new spiral of violence. Finding a way of holding states accountable for their international climate responsibilities is urgently needed, because otherwise violence will not only increase as a consequence of climate change impacts, but seems likely to also increase as an attempt to control the reckless actions of other states.
However, as explained in detail above, the use of force would not even come close to solving the problems caused by climate change. It must therefore be a top priority that international cooperation eventually lives up to its name and that a viable solution for the well-being of all in the face of the changing climate is found and implemented. We need to finally come together as an international community in holding nation states accountable – because only in this way can we ensure that this paper remains what it is: the description of an intellectual, purely theoretical thought experiment.
Ole ter Wey is currently studying International Law and Human Rights at the UN-mandated University for Peace in San José, Costa Rica. He previously lived with a local community in Kiribati for over a year. There, he experienced first hand the consequences of climate change endangering the existence of an entire state. It was then that he began thinking about how to address forced migration and dedicated his Liberal Arts Bachelor to the topics of migration and integration.
[ii]Gleditsch, Nils Petter (2012): Whither the weather? Climate change and conflict. In: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 49(1), pp. 3-9. DOI: 10.1177/0022343311431288.
[iv]Brown, Oli (2008): Migration and Climate Change, p. 11. In: IOM Migration Research Series, Vol. 31. https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/njlite/srex/njlite_download.php?id=5866
[v]Bassetti, Francesco (2019): Environmental Migrants: Up to 1 Billion by 2050. https://www.climateforesight.eu/migrations-inequalities/environmental-migrants-up-to-1-billion-by-2050/
[vi]e.g., Steinbruner, John D. (2013): Climate and Social Stress – Implications for Security Analysis, p. 37. Washington: The National Academies Press.
[vii]Martin, Craig (2020): Atmospheric Intervention? The Climate Change Crisis and the Jus ad Bellum Regime, p. 334. In: Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, Vol. 45(S). DOI: 10.7916/cjel.v45iS.5786.
[viii]Corten, Olivier (2017): Necessity, p. 862. In: Marc Weller, The Oxford Handbook of The Use of Force in International Law, pp. 861-878. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[ix]UNOCHA (2012): Foreign Military and Civil Defence Assets in Support of Humanitarian Emergency Operations: What is Last Resort?. http://www.unocha.org/sites/dms/Documents/Last%20Resort%20Pamphlet%20-%20FINAL%20April%202012_5.3.pdf
[x]Kinsella, David (2013): The Use of Force to Achieve Climate Change Goals, p. 18. http://web.pdx.edu/~kinsella/papers/isa13.pdf
[xi]Mirza, Muhammad Nasrullah (2019): Use of Force in Self-Defence for Global Peace: A Conceptual Framework, p. 21. In: Strategic Studies, Vol. 39(3), pp. 1-21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48544307
[xii] UN Charter (1945): United Nations Charter (full text), Art. 39. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
[xv]Bourghelle, Valentine (2019): Climate change in the Security Council: On the road to qualifying climate change as ‘threat multiplier’. In: Völkerrechtsblog, 9 December 2019. DOI: 10.17176/20191209-180639-0.
[xvi]Dipalo, Sabina (2018): The Security Council’s Non-Determination of a Threat to the Peace as a Breach of International Law, p. 61. In: Pécs Journal of International and European Law. 2018/01, pp. 61-81. http://ceere.eu/pjiel/wpcontent/uploads/2018/08/63pjielPJIEL1801.pdf
[xviii]e.g., Scott, Shirley V. (2008): Climate Change and Peak Oil as Threats to International Peace and Security: Is It Time for the Security Council to Legislate?. In: Melbourne Journal of International Law. Vol. 9(2), pp. 495-515. https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1683221/Scott.pdf
[xix]Toufanian, Melissa Turley (2020): Climate Change at the UN Security Council: Seeking Peace in a Warming World. https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/climate-change-a-un-security-council-seeking-peace-warming-world/
[xxi]Bourghelle, Valentine (2019): Climate change in the Security Council: On the road to qualifying climate change as ‘threat multiplier’. In: Völkerrechtsblog, 9 December 2019. DOI: 10.17176/20191209-180639-0.
[xxii]As the most prominent examples, neither the Kyoto Protocol nor the Paris Agreement could significantly change the progress of climate change.
[xxiii]Proper authority, just cause, right intention, proportionality, last resort.
[xxiv]Stanford Encyclopedia (2016): War, 2.5. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
[xxvi]Kunz, Josef L. (1947): Individual and Collective Self-Defense in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, p. 872. In: The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 41(4), pp. 872-879. https://doi.org/10.2307/2193095
[xxvii]Gray, Christine (2012): Climate Change and the Law on the Use of Force, p. 238. In: Rosemary Rayfuse, International Law in the Era of Climate Change, pp. 219-241. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
[xxviii]Nollkaemper, André (2017): Failures to Protect in International Law. In: Marc Weller, The Oxford Handbook of The Use of Force in International Law, pp. 437-461. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[xxix]Glover, Nicholas (2011): A critique of the theory and practice of R2P.
“Environmental problems threaten people’s health, livelihoods and lives, and can cause wars.”[1]
“This place once used to be my home!” I remember well Akineti’s (pronounced ‘Akines’) facial expression when she told me this whilst pointing beyond the coastal line. I recognized a combination of desperation, disbelief, and anger. Of course, I cannot exclude the possibility that my own feelings prejudiced my perception. Akineti and some 2,000 other I-Kiribati (people of the South Pacific island nation Kiribati, pronounced ‘Kiribas’) live on the small atoll of Tabiteuea North, and therefore, at the forefront of climate change threats. Akineti continued:
“When I lost my home to the sea, my two sons and I fled to Tarawa [capital of Kiribati] to find a job and better protection from the threats of climate change, such as the lack of fresh water supply. However, I then returned only one year later as the situation in Tarawa was even worse than in Tabiteuea. We barely found a place to stay as Tarawa is very densely crowded, I could not grow my own food because of salination, and in the dry season there was almost no clean, fresh water supply.”[2]
In order to place this very personal story within a wider context, the following paragraph shall introduce the reader to the island nation of Kiribati and the impact and challenges climate change has on its people. The aim of this essay is to explore how people like Akineti and the citizens in Kiribati can live a peaceful life despite the threats already mentioned and further elaborated upon below.
Overview of the Situation
The Republic of Kiribati lies about halfway between Australia and Hawaii in the South Pacific and consists of 33 atolls. Together, these atolls make up a mere 800 square kilometres of land. If the sea areas are included in the calculation, Kiribati is one of the largest countries in the world – about the size of India.[3] Until 1979, Kiribati was a British colony. Probably not entirely by chance, the young island state was given its independence in the same year that the last phosphorus deposits were mined, thus exhausting the country’s largest source of income to date.[4] Not least because of this historical incident, Kiribati has been dubbed one of the world’s so-called LDCs (‘least developed countries’). In addition, the Kiribati atolls have a special feature that makes them particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change: the highest elevation of each island rises only three to four meters above sea-level.[5] According to calculations commissioned by the World Bank, about two thirds of the atolls will have sunk into the sea by the end of this century. The same study has found that in less than forty years, life on the islands will no longer be possible due to the salination of the groundwater.[6]
Today, climate change already causes some severe problems for I-Kiribati. According to the United Nations (UN), ‘[c]ommon effects of climate change felt and experienced are coastal inundation, loss of houses along [the] coast leading to relocation of villages to safer inner areas of islands, [and] aggravated soil infertility with sea water intrusion’.[7] This direct ecological impact of climate change ultimately leads to the deterioration of local socioeconomic conditions as it exacerbates the existing development pressures of rapid urbanisation, pollution, and poor sanitation which in turn compromise the availability of freshwater resources and the land that sustain the communities that depend on them.[8]
Though the intensity of these effects will only increase in the future, there is no violent or even open conflict, neither within the Kiribati population nor between Kiribati and any other state. In the Inventory of Conflict and Environment database, the Level of Conflict as well as the Fatality Level of Dispute (encompassing military and civilian fatalities) were predicted as ‘low’[9] and this prediction was confirmed in the last decade. This begs the question of whether conflict resolution really is the right approach to address the above-stated problems. Unfortunately, this superficial understanding of the concept of conflict resolution is applied far too often. As Prof. Emeritus Amr Abdalla[10] and the former UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser Edward C. Luck[11] and others have emphasised, conflict prevention is at least as important as conflict management, conflict resolution, and conflict transformation. Rather, these three concepts only increase in importance when conflict could not be prevented in time. In order to prevent conflict, it is necessary to recognize conflict potentials at an early stage and to respond proactively.
In the present instance, some latent conflict potentials are obvious. The more citizens flee from the particularly threatened outer islands (such as Tabiteuea) to the main island, the more the overpopulation of Tarawa increases. This results in a variety of potential conflicts, ranging from disputes over land and the struggle for jobs, to increasingly poor sanitation – this list is not exhaustive. Cases in which, despite sufficient information, no timely action was taken can be used here as deterrent examples. Perhaps the cruellest result of a missed opportunity for conflict prevention was the Rwandan genocide in 1994.[12] More than half a year before the genocide began, in August 1993, a report by the UN human rights investigator for Rwanda warned of an escalation of violence between the population groups. But despite these and other early warnings, the UN did not intervene until many hundreds of thousands of lives had already been lost. Even if the dimensions in Kiribati are of a much smaller scale, it is nevertheless evident that immediate action must be taken to prevent the initial tense situation from turning into outright violent conflict. That said, before launching into a discussion of concrete measures, the peace that shall be achieved for the people of Kiribati must first be transformed into tangible objectives.
How could peace be achieved more generally?
Specific needs
To achieve stable and long-lasting peace, the basic human needs of all parties must first be met. These are non-negotiable.[13] Since in this case of conflict prevention we initially consider only one (albeit heterogeneous) party, the most urgent needs can be identified quite clearly. The Kiribati population fundamentally requires respect for their rights to life, security, and dignity, as set forth in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[14] It is important to break down these abstract demands more precisely into specific interests
As such, the present main interests of I-Kiribati’ are food security, sufficient access to clean drinking water, and enough space within which to live. Due to the rural exodus caused by climate change, more than 50% of the Kiribati population currently live on the 15 square kilometre main island of South Tarawa. This means that the island has one of the world’s highest population densities of more than 3500 people per square kilometre. This restricts living and farming space, and it also limits job opportunities or access to education given the lack of resources to accommodate the population. The citizens of Kiribati are forced to resort to expensive imported food, with little chance of earning an income. In addition, the sanitation facilities and infrastructure are not designed for such masses of people. This in turn leads to an increase in the contamination of the groundwater and more frequent outbreaks of disease. There are of course many other problems which could be further elaborated upon, but which are beyond the scope of this study. It does not take much imagination to realize that if the above-mentioned threats and pressures continue to increase, an escalation of the enormous conflict potential into violent conflicts could occur over scarce resources. But what must be done now to prevent such an eruption of conflict?
The approach to conflict resolution in general and conflict prevention specifically must be to tackle the causes of conflict at its roots and not merely its symptoms.[15] In this case, these roots are very quickly dug out. All the problems described are attributable to rising sea levels and therefore to climate change.
Approaches to combating climate change
Approaches to combating climate change stem from many different disciplines. Firstly, the field of peace education should be highlighted as possibly one of the most important. In order to achieve change, it is essential to educate people to think critically. This is particularly true in relation to climate change not only for affected populations but especially for external people whose thoughtless participation in the current social order contributes to the progression of climate change. Otherwise, in the style of banking education, only the status quo is maintained. Peace education, with its realistic and critical approach, is therefore predestined to address structural problems, since it ‘strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality’[16].
Secondly, sustainable agriculture can also play a major part in combating climate change by replacing the use of pesticides with more diversity in the crop fields. The loss of more and more diversity in different crop varieties in general and of genetic diversity within a particular crop type due to ubiquitous monoculture poses a threat in the face of climate change. The world population depends on a diminishing variety of crops. And if this one genetic variant of wheat, for example, were to grow worse due to climate change, large parts of the population, especially in developing and least developed countries, would suffer from hunger. Greater diversity in crop fields is therefore an important adaptation to climate change. Moreover, the production of food represents a significant part in the emission of greenhouse gases. It is primarily the production of livestock products that contributes to climate change. Thus, driving the shift from industrial agriculture to agroecology and promoting a more effective, plant-based food supply.[17]
Finally, climate agreements such as the 2015 Paris Agreement or the 2009 Copenhagen Accord also play an important role. These represent globally negotiated climate targets such as limiting global warming to a maximum of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius. However, the legal status of such agreements is problematic.[18] The Copenhagen Accord is not legally binding, and the Paris Agreement also has its weaknesses. For instance, big players such as the United States (US) and Brazil can withdraw from the agreement, which would represent an immense drawback in the fight against climate change as these states are among the biggest polluters in the world.
What could peace look like in this situation?
Would it be advantageous, then, to support these existing attempts to address climate change in the hopes of maintaining conflict prevention in Kiribati? As plausible as this consideration may seem, it can and must be rejected. For Kiribati, the insight of the international community comes simply too late. The climate reacts slowly to human efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. According to various sources,[19] the climate is only reacting to today’s greenhouse gas emissions with a delay of about 50 years. In other words, even a global end to greenhouse gas emissions starting tomorrow cannot change the fate of Kiribati. I would like to emphasise once again that the fight against climate change is not pointless, but rather that it comes too late for Kiribati. Nevertheless, we may still contemplate which of these peace-bringing approaches would be most promising for conflict prevention in Kiribati.
Taking a slightly futuristic approach would lead us to discuss the lifting of the atolls and strengthening the walls of the freshwater lens. Indeed, there are already some artificial islands in the world whose construction has been adapted. One of the most famous is probably the palm-shaped Palm Jumeriah in Dubai. While this island was created completely from scratch, in Kiribati there would only have to be an elevation of the existing island. This could involve shovelling sediment from the lagoon to gradually raise the island further out of the water. What sounds simple at first, however, means tremendous structural problems for an inhabited island as well as the need for an enormous amount of financial resources. Nevertheless, China is an even more a potent advocate for this solution.[20]
An alternative approach lies in planned migration, or ‘migration with dignity’[21]. This plan was long promoted by former Kiribati President Anote Tong before current President Taneti Maamau’s technocratic approach of lifting the islands became the focus of national interest.
What are the challenges to peace?
Mangroves
Kiribati is already taking adaptation measures to keep the consequences of climate change within tolerable limits. For example, the population is building so-called sea walls to provide some protection during high tide. In addition to other personal protection measures taken by the citizens, the state itself is also promoting projects to prevent land erosion, for example. To this end, large areas of mangroves are being planted in coastal areas, and the resulting strong root network at least slows down the erosion of the coast.[22] However, as an investigative committee of the Kiribati government has also confirmed, these isolated measures will only be able to provide relief for a very limited period.[23]
Floating islands
Commissions of experts are proposing stronger measures for habitat conservation. Researchers from University College London’s Mechanical Engineering Department, for example, are proposing ‘to construct major sea defences, dredge the seabed to reclaim earth or ship earth to Tarawa Atoll, [or to] construct a platform over the island or raise all buildings on stilts’[24]. They even present a floating island as a promising measure. It would consist of 102 triangular aircushion-supported modules, six of which would form a separate district that would be as autonomous as possible whilst still connected to all other communities. The researchers also suggest that ‘[l]ocal photovoltaic and hot water solar panels [are supposed to] provide energy, and rooftop collection and large storage reservoirs [to] provide fresh water’[25]. They promise the citizens of Kiribati ‘that traditional values and lifestyles can be respected and preserved’[26] and at the same time that their quality of life can be drastically improved. These promises of a better life through technical achievements can be cited as a prime example of a techno-centred understanding of sustainability. This is characterized by the conviction that damage caused by climate change can be absorbed by technology, and thus fights the symptoms instead of the origin of the problems. This understanding of sustainability is said to be particularly close to economy as it would not require major cuts in carbon emissions but allows for further economic growth without changes in the means of production.[27] Indeed, this rather economy-centered approach is also reflected in the report of the researchers of the London College, which promises Kiribati the possibility of economic growth based on sustainable design as a result of the adaptation.[28]
Unsurprisingly, however, the vision of the floating island does not begin with economic growth, but with an immense investment. The estimated cost of implementing such a huge project is £874 million per community. If 17 communities and five strategic areas complete the artificial island, the total cost will amount to £19.2 billion [~$25 billion].[29] For an LDC state with a GDP of $188.3 million this is an absurdly high sum. For other states with a significantly higher economic output, this would not be completely unthinkable. So, when a country with a large margin of manoeuvre such as China offers its help, Kiribati will certainly be listening.
Kiribati is now planning to raise its existing islands by one to two meters with China’s help.[30] As President Maamau has stated, ‘[t]here are already plans to build up part of [the capital atoll] Tarawa through dredging fill materials from the lagoon’[31]. He adds that the main island is to be raised, and that the ‘20-year vision has also included strategies to secure dredgers that will assist with these efforts as well as dredging channels in the outer islands’[32]. Thus, the measures could potentially lead to a relaxation of the situation, as fewer people would move from the outer islands to the main island, minimizing the negative effects of overpopulation as described above.
China’s role
The increasingly strong role of China in Kiribati, which is relatively close to Hawaii, is viewed with suspicion by Western forces. In fear of a Chinese military base in Kiribati, the US and its allies in the Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand are trying to frame relations between Kiribati and China in an unfavourable light on the international stage. In August 2019, for example, when the Chinese ambassador was ceremonially received on an outer island, he was given a path of young men lying on the ground in accordance with the local culture. This is one of the highest honours in Kiribati, and if the ambassador had rejected it and not walked over the men’s backs, it would have been considered insulting. Some Australian media, however, used the resulting photograph to portray China as ‘an imperialist state intent on colonizing the world’[33]. This deliberate misinterpretation of the image is a typical way of discrediting the opponent in conflict situations.[34] Though China is clearly aiming to strengthen its influence in the region, considering the fact that if Kiribati does not take effective measures within the next 30 to 40 years, the country will no longer be habitable, it is understandable that China’s offer to help would be accepted.
Migration with dignity
An elevation of the island could just be presented as a first option for the prevention of conflicts, which in Kiribati are increasingly arising from the consequences of climate change. In very simple terms, the shrinking of the island due to rising sea levels was identified as an underlying cause of potential conflict. Since mitigation measures of climate change are too late for Kiribati due to the delayed response of the climate, an approach to conflict prevention in the elevation of the island was thus discussed. However, some weaknesses of this idea, such as its feasibility, were also revealed and questioned. Another approach can be outlined in equally very simplified terms as follows: The original cause of conflict (climate change) for Kiribati cannot be reversed in time. And as with the island elevation approach just discussed, this scenario as well identifies Kiribati’s geographic features as another cause of potential conflict. To address these location issues, an even more radical measure could also be thought through as an alternative to elevating the island: Kiribati’s population is suffering from the effects of climate change combined with the island’s geography. Since climate change cannot be stopped in time, why don’t people move to another location? In this regard, former Kiribati President Anote Tong coined the term ‘migration with dignity’ during his period in office.[35] The idea behind it is to be prepared in the event of the foreseeable end of the island nation. A few years ago, Kiribati has therefore even bought land on an island of Fiji. However, there is little to no infrastructure there, so it would not be feasible to simply move its inhabitants there. Moreover, the country is at least partially inhabited by an indigenous tribe of Fiji, which is why another conflict party could potentially be added in this scenario. But is the purchase of land the only route to regulated and dignified migration?
So far, the answer to this question is probably yes. In 2015, Ioane Teitiota, a citizen of Kiribati, claimed asylum in New Zealand as the world’s first climate refugee. But the New Zealand court rejected the claim and Teitiota’s appeal to the OHCHR was not granted either.[36] The fact that climate refugees have not yet been legally recognized seems at first glance to be rooted in bureaucracy. The 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees does not cover such migrants, since it was originally drafted to protect those fleeing persecution, war, or violence.[37] However, on closer inspection, it seems that the UN is reluctant to put refugees from war and climate refugees on the same level, as it fears compromise in the support of war refugees. For ‘if the UNHCR broadens its definition of “refugee” to support an entirely new category, it is unclear if the political appetite exists to provide the necessary funding’[38] or whether the support of all refugees would be stopped. Contrary to these concerns, there are loud voices calling for exactly such a legal recognition of climate refugees as well. They claim that ‘in order to qualify as a refugee, you need to be fleeing persecution, or to fear persecution. Forgoing the term ‘climate refugee’ is also, in a way, forgoing the idea that climate change is a form of persecution against the most vulnerable and that climate-induced migration is a very political matter, rather than an environmental one.’[39]
However, until such a legal status is established, Kiribati is trying to take alternative paths and has concluded binational agreements with Australia, for example. The deal provides for young people in Kiribati to be specially trained for jobs in demand in Australia and then allowed to work in Australia, thus facilitating access to an official residence permit[40]. In this way, as many people as possible are to succeed in migrating with dignity. However, serious disadvantages of this approach are the so-called brain drain, as many young, well-trained workers leave the country, and the loss of Kiribati culture. While it can be concluded at this point that a violent conflict over resources in Kiribati would be successfully prevented in this scenario, the question of whether the many difficulties of migration do not also provoke some potential for conflict remains.
Conclusion
In conclusion, an evaluation of the two presented scenarios shall be made. The first part of the paper explained why conventional measures for environmental protection come too late for the Kiribati population. Subsequently, two adaptation measures were presented, which are exactly adjusted to the special situation of the island nation. First, the possibility of an artificial elevation of the island was discussed. The technocratic approach has many advantages: The Kiribati population can remain in their accustomed (though certainly changed) environment and, above all, remain together as a community. This would also ensure the preservation of the rich Kiribati culture and language. In Kiribati I felt the strong desire of the people to be allowed to stay in their country and especially not to give up the independence they gained only 40 years ago. Moreover, if the outer islands were to be raised along with the main island of Tarawa, the overpopulation in Tarawa could decrease, thus alleviating a great potential for conflict. However, it should not go unmentioned that Kiribati would be moving between the fronts of a growing international conflict between China and the Western powers. Furthermore, the issue of climate change and rising sea levels would remain a constant topic of discussion, as the adaptation measures would have to be repeated at regular intervals.
The latter point is a major advantage of the migration with dignity approach. Once the migration to a less vulnerable place has been successfully completed, the issue of climate change loses its everyday threat to I-Kiribati. However, another weak point in this scenario cannot go unmentioned: Who says that integration into the new environment will succeed? The many potential conflicts that can arise from a failed integration can be seen in almost every region of the world, even if an analysis of this problem is not possible in the context of this paper. Additionally, the Kiribati culture and language is in danger of being lost in the event of scattered migration to different places in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, etc. In fact, the state of Kiribati would probably disappear with such a step. One possible solution could be a joint migration to the acquired piece of land in Fiji. However, this land does not yet have any infrastructure, and the presence of the indigenous population brings other major potential for conflict. All in all, the migration with dignity approach would buy the desired physical security albeit with many other problems.
However, to ensure that Kiribati does not become one example among many in the near future, the decisive action of the international community is more important than ever before. For, as this article has repeatedly alluded to, the real underlying problem is the progression of climate change. While for Kiribati all mitigation measures are probably too late, for many other vulnerable regions of the world our actions today can still provide a future without dire conflict scenarios arising from the consequences of climate change. Determined climate action thus makes an enormously important contribution to global conflict prevention. In the words of Hopwood, ‘environmental problems are not local but global, so that actions and impacts must be considered internationally to avoid displacing problems from one area to another by actions such as releasing pollution that crosses boundaries, moving polluting industries to another location or using up more than an equitable share of the earth’s resources’[41].
Ole ter Wey, a Correspondent at Earth Refuge, is currently studying International Law and Human Rights at the UN-mandated University for Peace in San José, Costa Rica. He previously lived with a local community in Kiribati for over a year. There, he experienced first hand the consequences of climate change endangering the existence of an entire state
References
[1] Hopwood, B. (2005). Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches, p. 39. Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, pp. 38-52. DOI: 10.1002/sd.244
[3] Tereroko, T., et al. (2007). Republic of Kiribati – National Adaption Program of Action (NAPA). Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment, Land, and Agricultural Development – Government of Kiribati. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/napa/kir01.pdf
[4] van Trease, H. (1993). From Colony to Independence. In: H. van Trease, Atoll Politics – The Republic of Kiribati (pp. 3-22). MacMillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies.
[5] Tereroko, T., et al. (2007). Republic of Kiribati – National Adaption Program of Action (NAPA). Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment, Land, and Agricultural Development – Government of Kiribati. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/napa/kir01.pdf
[6] World Bank (2020). Climate Change Knowledge Portal – Country Kiribati. World Bank Group. https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/kiribati
[7] United Nations (2019), General Assembly: National report submitted in accordance with paragraph 5 of the annex to Human Rights Council resolution 16/21: Kiribati, A/HRC/WG.6/35/KIR/1 (11 November 2019), p. 19. Available from undocs.org/en/A/HRC/WG.6/35/KIR/1.
[8] Storey, D.; et al. (2010). Kiribati: an environmental “perfect storm”. Australian Geographer, Vol. 41(2), pp. 167-181. In: J. Campbell, et al. (2014). Climate Change and Migration Issues in the Pacific. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
[9] Ketchoyian, K. (2011). Kiribati and Sea Level Rise. ICE Case Studies. http://mandalaprojects.com/ice/ice-cases/kiribati.htm
[10] Abdalla, A. (2020). C.R. SIPPABIO – A Model for Conflict Analysis. University for Peace.
[11] Luck, E. C. (2002). Prevention: Theory and Practice. In: F. O. Hampson (Eds.), Prevention – Opportunities for the UN system (pp. 251-274). Lynne Rienner Publishers.
[12] Tanner, F. (2000). Conflict prevention and conflict resolution: limits of multilateralism. International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 82(839), pp. 541-559.
[13] Abdalla, A. (2020). C.R. SIPPABIO – A Model for Conflict Analysis. University for Peace.
[14] United Nations (n.d.). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
[15] Abdalla, A. (2020). C.R. SIPPABIO – A Model for Conflict Analysis. University for Peace.
[16] Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Edition), p. 81. The Continuum International Publishing Group.
[17]Sylvester, O. (2019). Food security and sustainable agriculture in the 21st century: Key concepts and debates. University for Peace.
[18]D’Aspremont, J. (2015). The Collective Security System and the Enforcement of International Law. In: M. Weller (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Use of Force in International Law (pp. 129-156). Oxford University Press.
[19]e.g., Samset, B. H.; et al. (2020). Delayed emergence of a global temperature response after emission mitigation. Nature Communications, Vol. 11(3261), pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17001-1
[20] e.g., Pala, Christopher (2020): Kiribati’s president’s plans to raise islands in fight against sea level-rise. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/kiribatis-presidents-plans-to-raise-islands-in-fight-against-sea-level-rise, last retrieved: 18.08.2021; CBC Radio (2020): The tiny Pacific nation of Kiribati wants to raise its islands to save it from the rising sea. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5683498/the-tiny-pacific-nation-of-kiribati-wants-to-raise-its-islands-to-save-it-from-the-rising-sea-1.5682046, last retrieved: 18.08.2021
[21]Gormley, S. (2016). Migration with dignity: Their island nation may someday sink into the ocean, so what are Kiribati’s people to do?. Ottawa Citizen. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/world/migration-with-dignity-their-island-nation-may-someday-sink-into-the-ocean-so-what-are-kiribatis-people-to-do
[22] United Nations (2019), General Assembly: National report submitted in accordance with paragraph 5 of the annex to Human Rights Council resolution 16/21: Kiribati, A/HRC/WG.6/35/KIR/1 (11 November 2019), p. 19. Available from undocs.org/en/A/HRC/WG.6/35/KIR/1.
[23]Tereroko, T., et al. (2007). Republic of Kiribati – National Adaption Program of Action (NAPA). Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment, Land, and Agricultural Development – Government of Kiribati. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/napa/kir01.pdf
[24]Lister, N.; et al. (2015). Sustainable Artificial Island Concept Design for the Nation of Kiribati, p. 85. Ocean Engineering, Vol. 98, pp. 78-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2015.01.013
[27]Hopwood, B. (2005). Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches. Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, pp. 38-52. DOI: 10.1002/sd.244
[28]Lister, N.; et al. (2015). Sustainable Artificial Island Concept Design for the Nation of Kiribati. Ocean Engineering, Vol. 98, pp. 78-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2015.01.013
[30]Pala, C. (2020). Kiribati’s president’s plans to raise islands in fight against sea-level rise. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/kiribatis-presidents-plans-to- raise-islands-in-fight-against-sea-level-rise
[33]Yuwei, H. (2020). Misinterpretation of photo of Chinese ambassador to Kiribati refuted. Global Times. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1198295.shtml
[34]Manor, I.; et al. (2018). Visually framing the Gaza War of 2014: The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Twitter. Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 11(4), pp. 369-391.
[35]Gormley, S. (2016). Migration with dignity: Their island nation may someday sink into the ocean, so what are Kiribati’s people to do?. Ottawa Citizen. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/world/migration-with-dignity-their-island-nation-may- someday-sink-into-the-ocean-so-what-are-kiribatis-people-to-do
[36]OHCHR (2020). Historic UN Human Rights case opens door to climate change asylum claims. United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25482&LangID=E
[37]W. H. (2018). Why climate migrants do not have refugee status. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/06/why-climate-migrants-do-not-have-refugee-status
[39]Gemenne, F. (2015). One good reason to speak of ‘climate refugees’, p.71. Forced Migration Review, Vol. 49, pp. 70-71.
[40] Tereroko, T., et al. (2007). Republic of Kiribati – National Adaption Program of Action (NAPA). Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment, Land, and Agricultural Development – Government of Kiribati. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/napa/kir01.pdf
[41]Hopwood, B. (2005). Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches, p. 39. Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, pp. 38-52. DOI: 10.1002/sd.244
Climate-induced violence is rising in poverty-ridden regions across the earth, and women are being left in the shadows of its wrath.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, compounding variations in seasonality have resulted in an increased incidence of extreme weather events, acute environmental degradation, and a widespread decline in quality of life. With more than 95% of farmed land using rain-fed cultivation, these regions are heavily reliant on stable rainfall cycles to maintain annual agricultural yields. 1 In recent years, increasing severity in climate variability has magnified the intensity and frequency of flooding and drought, exacerbating issues of food insecurity and resource scarcity throughout the land.
Changes in climate disproportionately impact the livelihoods of women because they possess limited social control and ownership of land, and often serve as primary caregivers within their communities. They also face increased exposure to gender-based violence during periods of economic and environmental upheaval, as well as harmful discrimination in the labour market, making it difficult to generate alternative sources of income as needed.
Economic pressures have intensified with environmental disaster in many rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, driving hunger-based fatalities. In Angola, girls as young as the age of 12 are resorting to prostitution in order to avoid starvation. 2 Crisis coverage from the Thomas Reuters Foundation reports that “a girl might get 500 kwanzas ($1) for sex – enough to buy about a kilo of beans or two kilos of maize – but could get as little as 200 kwanzas.. Sometimes they earn as little as 5 RGT ($0.31) for one sexual encounter, which is .. not even enough to buy a loaf.” 3 These conditions simultaneously place girls at higher risk of sexual exploitation and human trafficking due to the subversive nature of the sex market.
In the Amboseli basin of southern Kenya, rising temperatures have caused rivers and grasslands to dry up, causing women and young girls to walk extensive distances to collect essential resources including firewood and water. 4 A field report conducted by the UN Africa Renewal program affirms that these tasks are both physically and mentally demanding, as it may take more than 20 hours per week to locate clean water, examine existing well levels, and carry the water home. 5 This process leaves young girls vulnerable to sexual assault and rape, whilst worsening the spread of infectious disease and infirmity within already weakened communities.
Environmental extremes also aggravate the prevalence of child marriage in various rural regions. The intensity and duration of recent dry spells have left countless families in dire need of basic resources, causing many to offer their daughters as brides to help ease financial stress. In rural districts of Malawi, “girls are forced sometimes to marry younger than 14. Some are impregnated by schoolteachers, some are forced to get married so the in-laws will bring bread and butter to their homes, others marry because of peer pressure. Especially when harvests are not good, these problems arise as girls are used to generate income.” 6
An increase in child marriage has further driven the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), as this procedure is often carried out in preparation for marriage. Despite bans that have been implemented to prohibit both of these practices, researchers in northern Kenya have witnessed a climate-related surge in cases. 7 Throughout the 2020/2021 season, periods of prolonged drought were superseded by widespread locust outbreaks, resulting in deeper impoverishment and irreparable damage to livestock and crops. Despairing households succumbed to desperate measures, marrying off their daughters in exchange for dowries. 8
Girls who have undergone FGM are also perceived as more ‘valuable’ in comparison to those who remain uncut, inviting higher bride prices. Many families are able to circumvent the bans on these practices by shipping their daughters to neighboring countries where laws are less restrictive, and having them sent back prior to marriage. 9
In the absence of government intervention, rates of child marriage and FGM will continue to rise in synchronicity with environmental disaster and displacement. A severe lack of legal reinforcement and safeguarding services in regions across Sub-Saharan Africa is contributing to this endless cycle of gender-based violence. If vulnerable areas are left without stronger protection aid, this issue will only continue to worsen as levels of hunger and extreme weather events become more pervasive.
It is vital to draw deeper attention to the connections between climate change and violence against women and children in order to subvert the underground nature in which many of these practices are conducted. In addressing the impacts of climate-sensitive stresses, it is crucial to accentuate the various gender disparities inherent in a shifting ecological framework.
Rachel Aronoff recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in English, and a specialization in Literature and the Environment. She is also certified in health and wellness coaching, personal training, and in the process of becoming a yoga instructor.
2. Batha, Emma. (2020) Cheap as bread, girls sell sex to survive hunger crisis in Africa. (2020). Thomas Reuters Foundation News. Retrieved May 24, 2021. https://news.trust.org/item/20200130182713-wao6m/
6. Climate change connections to HIV and AIDS. (2009). The Winds of Change: Climate change, poverty and the environment in Malawi, Oxfam International. Retrieved April 27, 2021. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/winds-change
“The worst victims of environmental harm tend also to be those with the least political clout, such as members of racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, or those who are geographically isolated from the locus of political power within their country”
– Caroline Dommen
The global scale at which modern multinational corporations (MNCs) operate inevitability results in widespread environmental harm.[1] This article contends that international law must be developed to hold MNCs accountable for transboundary environmental harm as well as to offer protection to those upended by such harm.
Developing the international system
Poorly regulated and substandard MNC activities have resulted in numerous accidents such as water contamination, deforestation, soil erosion, and the exploitation of natural resources by oil, mining, and forestry companies.[2] Domestic recourse is the preferred avenue for preventing environmental abuses by MNCs.[3]This, however, is a largely ineffective as it presents an orthodox view of law wherein states are the principle actors in the global order and state sovereignty is paramount.[4] This disregards the fact that MNC operations in the host country have the potential to affect that state’s environment as well as that of other countries, as was the case in Ecuador and Peru with regards to MNC water contamination.[5] Additionally, this ignores the very real influence MNCs have on governments, especially developing states and the threat this presents to domestic enforcement.[6]For example, the Nigerian state relies on oil MNCs as its major source of revenue, granting these corporations enormous influence and control.[7]
The current international legal order is, however, not well equipped to address transboundary environmental harms.[8]One solution is the development of international jurisprudence to recognise a universal substantive environmental right, under which companies can be held accountable.[9]This long-term approach should be supplemented by short term enforcement by economic superpowers such as the United States, where many MNCs are incorporated.[10]
The dual potency of a substantive environmental right
Some scholars and legal experts find universal acceptance of substantive environmental rights at the national, regional, and international levels.[11]However, most of these instruments that address environmental protection and economic development are criticised as being non-binding, soft- law agreements, many of which are worded so broadly that they provide little or no guidance to states or MNCs.[12]The current international instruments do not sufficiently combine environmental protection and human rights or establish a substantive environmental right.
If drafted, or phrased, and implemented correctly, the two main goals of a universal substantive environmental right should be: i) to prevent environmental harm; and ii) to protect those forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment, that is environmental migrants, post-harm.
Transboundary environmental degradation, including that perpetrated by MNCs, can impact millions at a time and the current international legal architecture does not offer any substantive protection for those displaced by this degradation.
The body of international human rights law does not effectively protect against displacement and migration which result from environmental degradation because it has not evolved to keep pace with the rapid advance of economic globalisation and the privatisation of resources.[13]The current lack of a universal provision means that at best, a substantive environmental right preventing harm and protecting migrants is to be derived from other existing rights, significantly weakening the position of those advocating for the protection of climate migrants and for the regulation of MNC activity.
It is therefore paramount that a universal substantive environmental right is developed to prevent of situations of environmental change as such as to promote reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the prohibition of transboundary damage as well as to mitigate the consequences of such harm, including especially the equal protection of all environmental migrants.
Human Rights Pulse core team member and Earth Refuge Archivist Vaughn is passionate about sustainability and human rights, his scholarship and writing focuses on international law, climate change and transitional justice.
[3] E. Prudence Taylor ‘From environmental to ecological human right: A new dynamic in international law?’ (1990) 10 Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 309 350.
[4] A Shinsato ‘Increasing the accountability of transnational corporations for environmental harms: The petroleum industry in Nigeria’ (2005) 4 Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 194.
[11] U.N. ECOSOC, Comm. on Human Rights, Sub-Comm. on Prevention of Discrimination and Prot. of Minorities, Review of Further Developments in Fields with which the Sub-Commission Has Been Concerned, Human Rights and the Environment: Final Report, ¶ 240, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/9 (July 6, 1994).
[12] Joshua P. Eaton, The Nigerian Tragedy, Environmental Regulation of Transnational Corporations, and the Human Right to a Healthy Environment, 15 B.U. INT’L L.J. 261, 297 (1997).
[13] Dinah Shelton, Human Rights, Environmental Rights, and the Right to Environment, 28 STAN. J.INT’L L. 103, 123 (1991).
Climate change is generating far-reaching effects on some of the most fragile populations and ecosystems on earth. Despite contributing the lowest carbon emissions per capita, climate-sensitive regions have been forced to bear the brunt of severe weather conditions and chronic biophysical changes in the environment.
Malawi, a landlocked country situated in Sub-Saharan Africa, remains one of the most vulnerable regions in the world affected by anthropogenic climate change. The land and the communities existing within it continue to be ravaged by extreme climate variability and environmental degradation, resulting in increased limitations in human mobility.
Throughout the past two decades, distinct inconsistencies in seasonal weather patterns have made it difficult for small-scale farmers and communities dependent on subsistence farming methods to maintain their livelihood. 1 The worsening irregularities in seasonality have exacerbated issues of food insecurity and disease, whilst intensifying the pervasive sense of poverty that plagues a majority of the nation.
The country’s socioeconomic well-being is actively tied to agricultural output, with 80% of its rapidly expanding population occupying rural land through small-scale farming. 2 A vast proportion of Malawian farmers depend on rainfed cultivation involving stable rainfall cycles to support agricultural production. This system heightens the risk of damage to annual crop yields, and limits the possibility of growth during dry seasons. Due to extreme financial affliction, the use of artificial water channeling remains particularly low, with less than 5 percent of farmers adopting irrigation methods. 3 The reliance on cyclical rainfall patterns amplifies the population’s susceptibility to the adverse effects of climate variability, such as flooding and drought.
Climate assessments reveal that seasonal dry and rainy conditions have become less predictable and more intense. During the 2016/2017 season, Malawi experienced extensive drought that led to acute crop failure and a sharp decline in agricultural production. 4 Simultaneously, crop yields had already dropped by 30 percent in the previous 2013/2014 season, adding to lingering issues of food insecurity and severe malnutrition. 5 Across the country, an estimated 6.5 million people – 39% of the population – including 3.5 million children are projected to have fallen below the annual minimum food requirements. 6 This has produced disturbing health effects on young and developing children, including issues of physical and cognitive impairment. More than 37 percent of children under the age of five (over 1 million) are stunted due to food insecure conditions. 7
Consecutive dry spells have prevailed in succeeding seasons, driving starvation rates. During the 2018/2019 season, 2.8 million people were identified as in crisis, with 450,000 people in immediate need of food. 8 The 2020 dry season brought prolonged drought to the Central and Southern regions of rural Malawi, resulting in limited crop production. The subsequent spread of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the economy and drove steep rises in commodity prices, affecting the livelihoods of both rural and urban districts. 9 It is predicted that approximately 2.6 million people will require aid to combat food insecurity throughout the 2020/2021 season. 10
Widespread flooding in Malawi has also increased in magnitude and frequency in recent years. In 2019 alone, two major tropical cyclones decimated the country, leaving 731,879 people in immediate need, 99,728 people displaced, and 975,588 facing adverse effects. 11
Changes in rainfall characteristics have made flooding more intense and destructive, exposing some of the poorest districts in the country to environmental displacement. Communities living in Nsanje, a marginalized region deeply prone to climate fluctuations, have been heavily displaced by recent flooding. 12 Many are driven to evacuation camps after finding their homes, livestock, and community infrastructure dismantled by the floods.
These conditions disproportionately amplify the protection risks of women and children because they hold very little social autonomy or access to legal safeguarding services. An Oxfam report revealed that “women may well have little option but to resort to prostitution in order to get income to feed their children. In Bwemba, the women estimate that in between five and seven out of every 10 households the woman might resort to selling sex for food during the critical months of December to February.” 13
Environmental disaster and displacement also force women and young girls to travel further distances to retrieve water, leaving them vulnerable to rape and assault. These measures simultaneously fuel the spread of HIV and AIDs, resulting in greater poverty and weakness within the population. 14
A growing concern is that Malawi’s highly climate-sensitive economy is not equipped to adapt to the impending challenges of climate change. The compounding effects of heavy flooding in conjunction with extensive dry spells will result in increased mortality rates and environmental displacement on a national scale. In order to combat the various challenges presented by severe climate variability, it will be critical for mitigation and adaptation strategies to be implemented at a local level. Utilizing localized knowledge can help provide better insight into developing a strong adaptation framework that prioritizes the needs of those most deeply affected.
It is vital to recognize that the most destitute regions in the nation, and on earth, remain those most insidiously neglected and adversely affected by the impacts of climate change. The ongoing climate crisis in Malawi will continue to deteriorate if its effects on highly vulnerable communities are left unchecked. In developing deeper awareness of the present and forthcoming threats of climate instability, we must mobilize greater urgency to move towards a more climate-resilient future.
Rachel Aronoff recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in English, and a specialization in Literature and the Environment. She is also certified in health and wellness coaching, personal training, and in the process of becoming a yoga instructor.
4. Climate Change Impacts in Malawi. (2020). Assessing the impacts of climate change on the agriculture sectors in Malawi, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
7. Kumchulesi, G. (2018). Persistence of Child Malnutrition in Malawi: Explanations from Demographic and Health Surveys. Journal of African Development,20(1), 69-75. Retrieved April 27, 2021.https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jafrideve.20.1.006
13. Climate change connections to HIV and AIDS. (2009). The Winds of Change: Climate change, poverty and the environment in Malawi, Oxfam International. Retrieved April 27, 2021.https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/winds-change
14. Climate change connections to HIV and AIDS. (2009).
International responses to growing conflict in nations struggling to overcome the consequences of imperialism, capitalism, and neoliberal policy are hypocritical and hyperbolic at best, and deplorable at worst.
The provision of foreign aid in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is extended myopically. It securitizes sexual violence[i], lacks structures supportive of restitution, and fails to ameliorate the legitimate losses of community safety, institutional rights, and welfare post-conflict. In this essay, focus will be placed on two areas within DRC: international aid and its distribution and the implications for the community safety, human rights, and welfare of its citizens.
The provision of international aid in DRC focuses on addressing gender-specific threats, and gender-based violence in particular. This paper employs an intersectional eco-feminist approach to explore the issues of women’s experiences of education inequality, gender-based violence, and environmental injustice to explain why it is necessary to create multi-pronged approaches to mitigate sexual violence in DRC.
This work serves to clarify and underscore the lack of interconnectedness in the policies governing the provision of international aid with regard to education inequality, gender-based violence, and education inequality. In critically exposing the links and inequalities within and between the three, this work implores a policy direction that does not utilize a singular focus but rather encompasses these facets in tandem. In sum, this approach urges a view of the gender-based violence of women as a nodal point [ii] in which each of the aforementioned facets receives the appropriate and necessary support within a nexus of complex and intertwined – as opposed to independent – human rights issues.
BACKGROUND
Gender-based violence takes center-stage in the context of international aid, feminist thought, and conversation on equality. The effort to recognize gender-based violence, threats, and insecurities on an international scale has been thoroughly documented. Established as a war crime in 1919, rape was first tried in 1997. The trial of Jean Paul Akayesu was the first to prosecute rape as a war crime and act of genocide. His trial correlates with the emergence of indictments and trials of rape.[iii]
Hansen[iv] recognizes that the pursuit of rape-related indictments in the historical context of former Yugoslavia as an important step in the international codification of rape during wartime as a humanitarian problem during the early 1990’s. When the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1820 in 2008[v], it was celebrated as a success for the effort of feminists to place gender-based violence, gender specific insecurities, and threats women face on the international stage. Resolution 1820 explicitly recognizes sexual violence as a weapon of war and a threat to international peace and security.
However, this was not without significant effort from the academy. Sara Merger’s article on the Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security[vi]provides great insight on the feminist background and context of gender-based violence in international security. The feminist literature of international conflict-related sexual violence has understood and conceptualized two camps as explanatory variables within the context of gender inequality, military culture, and armed conflicts.[vii]
The ‘opportunistic’ camp asserts that conflict-related sexual violence stems from soldiers’ masculine identity and claim to power; soldiers will rape because they are men, or because they are soldiers, or because they are men and soldiers.[viii],[ix] The widely adopted ‘weapon of war’ perspective argues that conflict-related sexual violence is used strategically by combatants for specific objectives “such as accessing and extracting material resources or undermining enemy morale.”[x],[xi] As it stands now, sexual violence as a weapon of war is recognized in “at least 12 Security Council resolutions passed since 2000 rivaling nuclear and biological weapons, terrorism, arms proliferation for receiving the most attention among security actors.”[xii]
This securitization of sexual violence is seen as an accomplishment amongst feminists, which gives it incredible political value, and deliberately frames sexual violence as a commodified item similar to that of arms or biological weapons. However, it is arguable that this commodification enables a conceptual – and forceful – mutation of our understanding of sexual violence that obfuscates feminist values and understandings of sexual violence, the gendered hierarchies, dimensions, inequities that inform it, and ultimately obscures the structures, power dynamics, and social consequences that underpin everyday sexual violence. According to Merger, securitization effectively decontextualizes and homogenizes sexual violence, augments aid strategies, and creates a political economy of sexual violence. These unintended effects shamefully neglect the intersections of institutional inequality that perpetuate perpetration during conflict and under normal conditions. Little distinction is made between and amongst perpetrators of sexual violence, between and amongst victims, and between the purposes of sexual violence in this framework.[xiii]
In decontextualizing and homogenizing the experience of sexual violence to fit neatly into the securitization framework, incidences of gender-based violence are relieved of their unique contexts and heterogeneity. We must remember that gender-based violence is an interaction, that it is nourished by narratives that render causal connections unclear, and also presents a manipulation of power that can grow to become symbolic. In this paradigm, however, perpetrators in armed groups or civilians are seen as one and the same, victims are given aid as though their experiences are uniform and indivisible, and the causal explanations for sexual violence are relieved of their nuance and complexity.
In the context of this characterization, a “vast majority of aid funds for sexual violence in armed conflict are directed toward treating victims of rape with only about a quarter of international funding directed toward preventing sexual abuse.”[xiv]In fact, findings reveal some organizations received more aid than necessary to “treat victims of sexual abuse, while they lacked funding to implement other crucial projects”[xv]. Strikingly, “funding earmarked for conflict-related sexual violence is nearly double the budget for all security sector reform activities.”[xvi]Security sector reform activities can include environmental protections, institutional development, and protections of education since these are also women’s issues that are gendered and – as will be explored – at their confluence, have high rates of gendered violence. Unfortunately, current aid programs target sexual violence singularly and tend to neglect general forms of violence.[xvii],[xviii],[xix] Funds narrowly provide support for healthcare in response to gender violence but can be limited to emergency responses, and are predominantly appropriated for treating victims of rape, disregarding other forms of sexual harm.[xx]The potential lost in developing aid strategies that may address root causes of conflict and insecurity rather than just one of its symptoms is incredible. Today, we are seeing aid funds specifically directed toward conflict-related sexual violence at the expense of broader programs that could address the structural causes of this form of abuse, or the structural causes of violence more generally.
On the other hand, the skewed nature of aid and its foregrounding of sexual violence as a global security threat has enabled its perpetration, and encouraged an exploitation of the victimization narrative. Merger’s article highlights a few sources that note this problem. Autessere[xxi] finds that the disproportionate focus on conflict-related sexual violence in eastern DRC “raised the status of sexual abuse to an effective incentive and bargaining tool”, whereby armed groups employ sexual violence strategically to break down morale as well as to leverage sexual violence as symbol of strength and dominance. Rebel groups were motivated to engage in “gang rape” by the prospect of seeing their names in headlines, and the increased negotiating power this provided them. Eriksson Baaz and Stern[xxii] note how the international focus on sexual violence against women and girls contributed to “a process in which allegations of rape are perceived as, and become, a particularly effective bargaining, and ultimately quite effective income-earning strategy”. Douma and Hilhorst[xxiii] note individual women in DRC have exhibited “shopping behavior,” whereby they “exchange information on the organizations that offer most or free assistance and by consequence prefer to go there”. There are also reports of “women that admit that they had not been raped, but fabricated a story to obtain services they needed but were only available to rape victims”. Further, stories of community workers that “lure women into saying that they have been raped with the promises for material and financial assistance” prosper. Allegations of rape have “become increasingly entangled in disputes over land, income and property”.[xxiv] Merger describes the confluence of these interactions as a political economy that situates a currency of sexual violence wherein aid organizations, victims, and perpetrators “all find material benefit in the commercial trade in this violence.[xxv]
In the context of DRC, gender-based violence is directly related to environmental justice and educational equity. An expansion of international aid and policy can address these three issues in tandem. Outside of a paradigm of securitization that creates a debilitating political economy around sexual violence,[xxvi] a policy shift recognizing the unique confluence of education inequality, environmental justice, and gendered violence is not only reflective of an eco-feminist approach to policy but would recognize the intersection of education, the environment, and violence. The eco-feminist approach to policy deviates from the co-opted feminist approach that serves to obfuscate humanitarian issues whilst linking it to the environment. In order to elucidate this further, this paper will outline gender-based violence in relation to issues of education inequality and gendered violence with a similar argumentation related to ecology, and particularly natural resource extraction.
I.EDUCATION INEQUALITY, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN
Education Inequality
Education inequality is cited as the number one indicator of social immobility in DRC. It is “a key factor in determining socio-economic status in the DRC, whereby the higher the education level of the head of the household is, the less likely it is for the family to be poor.”[xxvii] Along the lines of gender, girls face a greater rate of inaccessibility to education[xxviii]: they make up more than 54% of the non-schooled population in the world. More broadly, “in sub-Saharan Africa, over 12 million girls are at risk of never receiving an education”[xxix].
Education as a social institution provides safety, access to food, social mobility, and ingratiation into society for orphans and children of rape that are debilitated by gender-based violence which is influenced by conflict. Without policy that reflects the nuances of gender-based violence and its impact on these factors, a deplorable neglect of these children in the name of the application of obfuscated and myopic feminist policy occurs to their detriment.[xxx]
The pointed lack of child protection and child welfare systems in tandem with the underdevelopment of educational institutions is alluded to throughout this paper. According to DeHerdt and Titeca[xxxi], drop out rates and repetition rates were high on average across the country. Primary education was costly for parents and families to afford,[xxxii] and public finance of education went from $150 per pupil to $10 per pupil in 2006. At the same time, the number of primary and secondary teachers on government payroll was cut by half, and salaries were reduced by 25%. Since Tshesikedi has taken office, DRC embarked on a large reform measure to introduce free primary education. The goal was to reduce expenses for the poorest families. The World Bank approved $8 million in grants and loans to promote free primary education in eastern and central provinces.[xxxiii]Since September of 2019, this has been in effect.
Unfortunately, teachers complain they have not received wages which has led to protest. Teachers marched in Bukavu, South Kivu to voice this grievance reflecting failures in the implementation of this policy. Some teachers have abandoned their jobs or are absent with schools in response to the lack of wages. Children are left without supervision in these cases.[xxxiv] Compounded onto this, parents are still required to pay for their children’s uniforms or other decent clothes and learning materials.[xxxv] These impediments are directly affecting children’s access to education and teacher’s rights to timely pay. Overcrowding due to the displacement of refugees has complicated the issue as existing schools are unable to accommodate an overflow of refugee children.
Without a universal primary education or child welfare system, children in DRC are more likely to be exploited by exposure to violence, child mining operations, or by working as servants for families. Primarily, orphaned or children of gender-based violence experience this. They are “excluded from their communities, which causes them to experience severe trauma and distress. This causes a phenomena known as “street children”[xxxvi] ; their vulnerability so normalized as to have name. This paper will explore in depth the reality of a significant number of school-aged children working in mines. The work is extremely dangerous in nature, and these children are exploited due to the political economy of the region. Those more vulnerable –street children, orphans, and children of rape– have higher participation rates.[xxxvii] Orphaned children, for example, are experience dispossession and abandonment. Such vulnerability may be exploited by armed groups and militias to increase their capacity both as working units and operators of mines.
The confluence of these issues is a consequence of gender-based violence, violence in general, and the failure of international aid to recognize these multi-dimensional aspects of conflict. In delivering aid towards narrow and singular focuses, support counter-intuitively and unintentionally exacerbates the current context and impedes the development of approaches that are multifaceted and can target these issues and their intersections. For example, the lack of a developed child-welfare system or child-protection system in DRC, along with education inequality, forces children, particularly ‘street children’ into a an even more vulnerable position by preventing their access to an education as they experience higher rates of exploitation. Moreover, the weakened structure of educational institutions exacerbate the circumstances of these children by the absence of ability to accommodate orphaned children or children of gender-based violence. Yet, funding – as Merger’s analysis pointed out – does not recognize the multiplicity and intersectionality that a multidimensional approach would employ.
The Direct Link Between Education and Violence
Since the international paradigm is one that encourages the predominant narrative of DRC’s humanitarian crisis as one of sexual violence, we can follow that narrative to further illuminate the link between education as an institution and sexual violence to highlight the need for multi-dimensional policy reform. While DRC’s characterization as the rape capital of the world is not a direct misnomer, it ignores institutional, structural, and other causal factors that inform or fail to prevent violence; in particular, the lack of a child welfare-education system as well as a cursory application of feminist objectivity in international policy.
According to Article 34 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child[xxxviii]
“Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.
For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent:
a) The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
b) The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;
c) The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.”
‘Multilateral’ and ‘bilateral’ are keywords here. Multilateral approaches would consider the necessity of an education system and child-welfare system that protects children from intercommunal disputes, everyday rape, and rape as a weapon of war[xxxix].
Sexual violence generally occurs at high rates; during conflict, however, we see more pronounced links between gender-based violence and education inequality, outcomes, and child protection. While girls are already at risk of not receiving an education as aforementioned, during conflict the use of communities as a point of leverage puts girls, children, and the institution of education at risk.
To elaborate, as armed groups and national security forces violently negotiate control over natural resource-rich territories, 5.2 million children have gone without an education. In 2016, conflict in the Greater Kasai region displaced 1.8 million children in urgent need of education (HNO, 2019).[xl] Further, in the Tanganyika province, “a resurgence of violence resulted in the destruction of more than 300 schools while in Kasai region damaged infrastructure forced 150,000 children out of school.”[xli] Targeting of community infrastructure, and in particular educational institutions, contributes to the displacement of children and their access to and mobility within the already tenuous education institution in DRC.
The implications of this type violence are many. First, with a resurgence of violence during conflict, and the appeal to armed groups to leverage and negotiate the safety of individuals and communities for strategic gain, we see a similar political economy of war encouraging the destabilization of communities. Second, the violence inhibits the linear development of a social institution. Under ‘normal’ conditions, the progress of students and the social mobility they would experience as a result, would not be interrupted by egregious acts of violence. These acts of violence not only threaten their safety, but also the constitution of their academic identities: their emotional well-being, academic achievement, and academic progression.[xlii] In the upcoming example, it is clear how gender-based violence interdicts successful educational attainment, but destabilizes the structural integrity and continuity of education as an institution. Third, on the international stage, the violence occurring at the confluence of international education and gendered violence is neglected in the international security framework due to the sole focus of funds being provided to institutions for emergency responses, or general responses to gendered violence. Fourth, children that may need an education institution as a provisional space of security, in particular orphaned children and children of rape, are made increasingly vulnerable due to the high rates of exploitation. Together, these implications point to the need for change in international security frameworks to remedy the neglect of the intersection of violence, gender-based violence and education inequality.
Attacks against education institutions cannot be decontextualized. To illustrate the urgency behind a change in policy, we must bear witness to the human losses and victimizations at the confluence of education inequality and gender-based violence.
“On 31 August 2020 unidentified armed men attacked and raped female students at an examination centre hosting 35 final year students, 16 boys and 16 girls in Isiro town in Haut-Uélé province the night before exams. The students went on to take their exams the next day. Also on 31 August 2020 in South Kivu province, about 700 students and their teachers fled after fighting near an exam centre. On 27 August 2020, at least two students and one teacher were reported to have been killed in Masisi area of North Kivu province following a confrontation between security forces and an armed group near an exam centre. The students were killed while sitting the second day of the National Primary End-of-Studies Test in Ngoyi Primary School.[xliii]
Education inequality, child welfare, violence, and security purely and incontrovertibly intersect. Yet, this is not reflected in international policy and aid. In addition to violent and traumatizing victimization, there are further consequences of the lack of recognition of these intersections.
Important consequences of this, outside of violent and traumatizing victimization are many. First, a victimization influenced disruption of education which may prevent successful educational attainment exacerbating long-term educational equity and social mobility. As students endure, anticipate, or avoid violent interactions in school, their potential for educational attainment is impacted. Second, violence inhibits the fortitude of the educational structure and the support it offers. A curtailment of a ‘normal’ socialization process and access to essential services and support networks[xliv] occurs further harming the academic and personal progression of these students. Third, there are intergenerational impacts due to the intensity of the trauma, school dropout rates increase leading to structural disadvantages for future generations. Fourth, this violence largely affects women exacerbating present and significant gender inequality in the education sector and at large.[xlv] Fifth and finally, as these individuals experience sexual violence there is potential for increases in early pregnancy for girls that furthers the disruption in access to education that would otherwise occur during normal conditions.[xlvi]
Appropriating aid funding and security reform funding towards education and child welfare institutionally would greatly benefit and impede the use of sexual violence as a tool both under ‘normal’ conditions and during conflict. The benefits of a stronger, more protected education system and sound child-welfare system include a weakened pipeline to exploitation that armed groups and civilians can exploit, a reduction in the amount of street children and at-risk behavior amongst youth in vulnerable positions, multigenerational impacts related to social mobility for those with and without parental units, and a reduction in gendered inequalities in education. Building, rehabilitating, and most importantly securitizing these institutions would impede gender-based violence holistically.
Fortunately, the World Bank’s funding strategy is working towards this. Within the $800 million dollar aid Emergency Equity and System Strengthening in Education (EESSE) plan,[xlvii] are a multitude of goals focused on school safety, inclusion, fee reduction, and increase in accessibility. Unfortunately, the project development objectives and context lack a multi-dimensional analysis of inequality and gender-based violence in DRC. There is an avoidance of the link between gender-based violence, conflict, and education. The project indicates sexual violence with the same connotation as the international securitization framework. The component related to safety is “Disbursement Linked Indicator[xlviii] 4: Create Safe and Inclusive School Environments”, which is contingent on three Disbursement Linked Results. The Disbursement Linked Results[xlix] are unrelated to the potential for violence by armed groups and militias. There is a complete absence of funding for security reform for schools or an allusion to the incidence of conflict related Gender-based violence in schools.[l] This suggests a significant opportunity missed in a large funding package to create fortified institutions or to implement preventative measures that could withstand the potential of violence.
The United Nations[li] report does not emphasize the intersections of sexual violence in terms of locations, or with specific focus on educational institutions. Sexual violence is instead decontextualized and homogenized as instances of conflict-based sexual violence, rather than contextualized in terms of location, hierarchy, and gender inequality as feminist theory and praxis would advise.
II.RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism finds its roots in an ethic that recognizes the conceptual connection between environmental justice and feminism. The feminist philosophy argues that a deeper understanding of environmental issues and vice-versa is achieved through an analysis of the domination of nature by human beings in relation to the domination of women and children. The logics that dominate the earth are inextricably linked to the logics that dominate women. Feminist scholarship and environmental ethic are deeply connected.[lii],[liii]Gwen Hunnicutt argues that there is a pervasive logic of domination that explains many aspects of exploitation, extraction, and domination of both women and the earth. Donna Haraway[liv] describes ecofeminist thought as ascribing agency and a constructed reality to the earth enabling it as an actor in the story of man’s domination. In connection to women, Haraway articulates a perspective of feminist thought that describes women’s battle as one in which women, in opposition to a male-dominated society, are agentic actors within socially constructed realities that are devoid of essentialist and misogynistic thought that epitomizes patriarchy. This logic of domination extends from Marxist theory describing man’s domination of nature as a requisite of capitalism. Extending this to the domination of women reveals the link between the domination of nature and the domination of women.
Its conceptualization is strengthened by the incorporation and delineation of intersectional ecofeminism. Intersectional ecofeminism takes into consideration multiple forms and conversations of feminism including Indigenous Feminist thought, Indian Feminist thought, Latin American feminist thought, and African feminist thought. Ecofeminism bridges together the different tenets that link together the rights of the environment and the rights of the humans that inhabit it.[lv],[lvi],[lvii]As Mallory describes, there is much to gain from an “ecofeminist analys[is] of the material and conceptual intersections between the oppression of women, people of color, indigenous peoples, the poor, and other marginalized human groups and the degradation of natural places.”
Further, the many lived experiences of these marginalized groups, the analyses that stem from them, and their shared historical contexts make up the fabric of the fluid quilt that is ecofeminism; rather than existing as a theory to be debated and contested, ecofeminism exists as an inclusive discourse, encouraging the incorporation of new perspectives as Kings and Glazebrook describe.[lviii]
Incorporating this into our analysis of the provision of aid in relation to gendered-violence in DRC means considering the communal-industrial-governmental intersections, and applying the theoretical considerations of environmental and feminist ethic. This is in stark contrast to the one-dimensional approach that considers eliminating sexual violence as the panacea for safety, protection, and mobility for the Congolese civilians.
Political Economies of Resources, Territory, and Sexual Violence
The political economy of sexual violence is intrinsically connected to the political economy of territory and the claim to natural resources in eastern DRC. Environmental justice and natural resource extraction are explicitly linked. While community members lack the agency over their native environments and bear the brunt of the resultant socio-economic consequences, their environments endure significant harm. Experienced in tandem, social inequities that exist within these communities are exacerbated by the presence of harmful extractive activities such as mining. Experiences of volatility, instability, and boom-bust economic cycles as commodity prices shift are characteristic for communities that home extractive activity.[lix] Further, structural problems within these areas occur within the larger landscape of the nation. For instance, persistent poverty is a consistent theme in these areas due to the loss of local economic control to multinational firms.[lx]
The consequences go beyond the structural and environmental. In relation to the political economy of sexual violence, territory and claims to resource-rich land exacerbates the use of sexual violence as a tool of leverage and control. Territory, in particular, impacts the ability of communities to utilize their environment as they would under normal conditions. The contours of territory in the political economy of sexual violence and conflict at large impacts the safety of women and children – arguably this is safety they would experience under normal conditions. Under such conditions, according to Kings, “it is most often women who bear the brunt of the extra burdens created by climate change and environmental degradation.” For example, it is women that bear the brunt of having to travel further to collect water or food each day[lxi]. These travels would be, under normal conditions, considered a typical part of daily life. Under the conditions of conflict and within the political economy of sexual violence, these travels are precarious in DRC. Women and children are more vulnerable to government forces and rebel groups that are alleged to have engaged in heinous acts of sexual violence as a deliberate method to gain territory and disseminate fear. According to the Enough Project’s Interrupting Silence Report:
“…rebel and state army commanders oversaw or orchestrated rape and sexual enslavement while in effective control over their subordinate troops with knowledge that they were committing rape in the context of civilian attacks, triggering their liability for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court recently heard arguments by Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda alleging that … commander Bosco Ntganda oversaw and ordered troops to rape civilians. Bensouda argued that the FPLC used rape to terrorize non-ethnic Hema civilians under Ntganda’s command, and in one instance Ntganda ordered his bodyguards to rape three women in an apartment where he was staying.”[lxii]
At the intersection of territory and sexual violence, there is a threat to the local economic structure of communities. Policy should reflect the violence in the context of a strategic military tool to manipulate the psychology of communities and gain control over a particular areas and regions with connections to the harm mineral extraction. Policy of this caliber would set environmental regulations in regions and areas where there exist protections against extraction and its detrimental effects; in other words, policy would reflect the reality of the environmental implications of the political economy of sexual violence.
Further, both ecology and sexual violence are not issues to be securitized in tandem. To avoid the risk of further decontexualization, environmental regulations should be developed and implemented in the context of armed group and militia exploitation, economic disruption and use of sexual violence. Not only would this policy reflect a desire to prevent environmental degradation and the aforementioned economic consequences of harmful extractive policies, it would also respect the ownership of those native to their land and variety of harms they experience. Sexual violence on the other hand must be securitized with respect to the social organization in which it occurs as mentioned. Indeed there is an intersection between ecology and violence that cannot be disregarded and must be reflected in policy. Though, distinctively, there must be a respect for the complexity of both issues as occurring in a liminal space. There is a boundary between the sexual violence and environmental violence that occurs in Eastern Congo. Where one meets the other there is certainly overlap and the two human rights atrocities must be contextualized with respect to where there is mutual exclusivity. Experienced by women, men, boys, and girls by civilians, armed groups, military soldiers, and family members, sexual violence is reported to occur on paths to forge for food, it is experienced in the privacy of homes, and experienced on schools sites. Further, according to Claudia Seymour, there is an invisible violence that occurs that is not recognized or understood. The social organization of violence, its social consequences, and the obfuscation of the international human rights provision in its securitization process serves to work against progress in the region. While environmental degradation, exploitation, is experienced where mining cites are present,[lxiii] sexual violence is also the tool or rather vehicle by which familial disruption, morale destruction, and painful invisible violence occurs.[lxiv] Sexual Violence, therefore, shapes the contours of the social reality and organization of the individuals, communities, and provinces experiencing it. Research and policy must reflect this and deviate from a decontextualized conflict perspective that understands sexual violence as a condition or symptom. It is a condition while also being conditional. It requires microscopic observation and analysis to wholly understand and prevent.
The framework of environmental justice reconciles community protection and sustainability with environmental protection and sustainability. Policy that reflects this connection can influence outcomes in the following example. In certain cases,
“crimes involving SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence] involving SGBV also undermine authority figures traditionally meant to protect women and children in the community.[lxv] Furthermore, sexual violence both drives and stems from forced displacement: when soldiers and rebels rape civilians, civilians often flee out of fear of repeat attacks or stigmatization. Internally displaced persons and refugees are in turn disproportionately vulnerable to sexual violence in part because they live in IDP and refugee camps that lack security and rule of law.”[lxvi]
In the framework of environmental justice and feminist ethic, social equity and harm prevention are emphasized as values driving policy. In establishing protections for territory, there is recognition of the community impact related to the location of that community and its environment. Practically speaking, environmental considerations in regulatory reforms relating to territory at the national and provincial level would reflect the “precautionary principle; erring on the side of human safety and wellbeing rather than industrial development.”[lxvii] In the next section, we will explore what this may look like.
III.CHILD LABOR
Exploring the linkages between feminist thought and environmental ethic exposes multiple junctures that necessitate policy upheaval and reform. Previously articulated is the necessity to include environmental protections to territory to further dissuade a critical juncture wherein the rights of vulnerable human and non-human life are magnified and accentuated. Unfortunately, without such policy, the rights of the child in Eastern DRC are exploited to a heinous extent. These children are neglected due to international and national focus that homogenizes humanitarian issues related to conflict.
Child Labor and Forced Labor Reports reveal that no advancements were made in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.[lxviii] Despite the aforementioned initiatives such as universal primary education, anti-trafficking in persons law, and the finalization of a five-year strategy to combat human trafficking, there are still large gaps and inequities in the delivery of these programs, and the violence that occurs in spite of these policies, as well the complicity of factions of the military means that children continue to be forced into labor and sexual slavery.[lxix]
Although the national government has taken steps to eliminate the worst forms of child labor– the exploitation of children sexually, militarily, and in relation to mining– complicity within factions of the military prevents full implementation and adjudication of crimes related to child labor legislation. While there is legislation prohibiting forced labor, child trafficking, and commercial sexual exploitation of children, non-state armed groups continue to kidnap, recruit, or use children in armed conflict and mining operations in 2019.[lxx] For example, a North Kivu military court sentenced an Allied Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) colonel to life imprisonment for child soldier recruitment. Also, the Bukavu Garrison Court in South Kivu condemned three members of the Raia Mutomboki militia of systemic child soldier recruitment in 2018. They were sentenced to 15 years to life imprisonment.[lxxi] However, during the proceedings, the government was found liable for failing to take all necessary steps and measures to prevent the crimes, and was ordered to pay reparations.[lxxii]
Military and government complicity has long standing consequences. The government consistently failed to prosecute perpetrators to the fullest extent, sometimes repositioning them, effectively treating perpetrators with impunity. For instance, the FARDC was linked to two cases of exploitation of children in two roles – as concubines and forced labor. The responsible perpetrator was redeployed to a different regiment in 2019.[lxxiii]Further exemplifying this impunity is the case of Colonel Ramazani Lubinga, former commander of 601st Regiment of FARDC. A warrant was issued for his arrest for recruiting child soldiers, yet his military superiors refused to comply.[lxxiv]
RECOMMENDATIONS
Overall, what is required is a “breakdown of the intellectual silos that isolate topics of conflict economics and security in Congo from gendered violence and women’s empowerment”[lxxv] that then includes environmental justice and feminist ethics.
Children, Education, and Labor
As aforementioned, children outside of school face detrimental consequences to their future mobility, the worst consequence of which is vulnerability to child labor. Thus, social programs and the enhancement of access and reintegration into, and continued pursuit of education for children of vulnerable groups, orphans and those exploited by child laborers is a necessary preventative step.[lxxvi] Outside of social programs, another recommendation would be the socialization of the mining industry. An example of this already exists within the state-owned mined artisanal “strategic minerals”. This means more locally controlled and smaller-scale mining projects have been socialized, removing precarious middlemen which enables greater price stability. Volatility in price affects the local economic context, and is a contributor to persistent poverty while creating devastatingly regular instability in these regions.[lxxvii], [lxxviii] The removal of middlemen also decreases the potential for child labor. Monitoring of the supply chain carried out by a separate body ensures that children and other vulnerable populations are not employed in the mining sites.
Ecofeminism
The incorporation of the environmental-feminist ethic of ecofeminism implies the application of procedural justice, and the inclusion of the most vulnerable groups in the decision-making process. This entails that community leaders – particularly those that have been subject to the harms of extractive policies, child labor, and the complicity of the government – will have the opportunity to authentically and materially participate in the decision-making process regarding price stability, labor supply, and redistribution of revenue in the development of state-owned mining companies. State-owned mining companies must allow and enable community members and stakeholders to hold decision-making power. This is essential to rectifying the injustices of the extractive industry. Top-down approaches and governmental solutions are incomplete without the voice and conversation of those directly impacted by the mining industry, its environmental, and very real human rights consequences. Whilst harsher, more stringent penalties, prosecutorial judgements, and accountability processes are also necessary to serve as a deterrent, reparations and accountability should have an effect beyond that of financial compensation. Procedural justice, equity, and empowerment should be primary goals in social and economic policy recommendations and reforms; procedural equity can also serve to support communities during the disinvestment of mining companies and the negotiations between armed groups, communities, and the government in the elimination of child labor.[lxxix]
Procedural Equity
Community involvement in the deliberation, development, execution, and possible removal of mining operations or other concerns of environmental justice must become a component of international and national efforts to resolve conflict in eastern DRC. Enforcement and protection of procedural equity must be ensured in order to maintain its effectiveness. Its implementation must occur to ameliorate the harsh economic, environmental, and community impacts of extraction to prevent a recurrence of similar consequences in the future.
Securitizing the protection and process of procedural inequity would ensure communities have a stake and claim in the processes that affect their local economies and environmental surroundings. Unfortunately, due to the securitization of sexual violence, the development of procedural equity receives less funding and less priority than explicit efforts to reduce and mitigate rape. Prioritizing and securitizing procedural inequity and increased security reform in this area would alongside efforts to reduce sexual violence and reduce child labor would reflect the true nature of the structural components informing sexual violence, and respecting its relation to the environment.
Policy Implications
Following the recommendations of multiple policy reports[lxxx] on the rights of children and education policy, 1) international aid should reflect the need for the development of a national child welfare system and become an urgent priority 2) Increasing the age required for children to go to school would promote the enrollment of students in school; this also enables the protection of students from exploitation. 3) The socialization and implementation of government funded institutions located throughout Eastern Congo,[lxxxi] in conjunction with the initiatives of birth certificate registration, school enrollment, and the rehabilitation educational institutions, a national child welfare institution should be prioritized.
Policy recommendations for international aid that center procedural equity, or go as far as securitizing procedural inequity, as a deliberate objective in the development of state-owned mining operations or companies, the dissolution of, removal of, or insertion of multinational mining companies. Consideration of the needs of the community, particularly those in conflict zones. During negotiations with armed groups, procedural equity for communities must be considered.
And lastly, on the international stage, the consequential narrative of DRC as the rape capital of the world must be deconstructed and delineate the complex, multifaceted nature of the cultural, social, institutional, political-economics, and influence of conflict compared to ‘normal’ conditions in the massive rates of sexual violence. International aid should move away from the silo of sexual violence and work more broadly towards education equality, child welfare, and environmental justice.
CONCLUSION
The decontextualization and homogenization of sexual violence and conflict economics render the structural and contextual factors that influence the incidence of sexual violence invisible. The resultant narrative of rape as the most pressing humanitarian issue in DRC obfuscates these factors. A new narrative must delineate the multifaceted nature of the cultural, social, institutional, political-economics, and influence of conflict in these rates. International funds and NGOs – both abroad and on the ground – must reflect this change by engaging sexual violence discourse, and directing aid delivery away from unilateral guidelines that isolate access in their administration of aid.
Furthermore, deliberately moving attention away from sexual violence and shifting the contours of international aid to reflect the intersection of the aforementioned dimensions that influence the rate of sexual violence would reduce its compounding counterproductive effects. These include the influence of NGOs on the political economy of sexual violence, the perpetuation of rape as a weapon of war, and the increasing the rate at which individuals create false narratives to access health services and NGO support.
This will enable an appropriation of funds that would better support a response reflective of the multidimensional aspects of violence. If, “in DRC, funding earmarked for conflict-related sexual violence is nearly double the budget for all security sector reform activities,”[lxxxii] it is clear that delineating and contributing aid to the multiple structural components that contribute to this harm would be a better use of international support. Projects such as the full implementation of universal education, child welfare, and implementation of enforced procedural equity are all necessary steps to combat the instability that is globally perceived as symptomatic of an epidemic of sexual violence.
Finally, it is clear from an intersectional ecofeminist perspective that sexual violence never occurs in a vacuum. Considering the structural and institutional influences that contribute to, inform, and could potentially dissuade acts of exploitation and sexual violence is necessary to combat it. Ultimately, by contextualizing and acknowledging the heterogeneity of sexual violence deep institutional and social issues are observable and thus solvable. Through an ecofeminist understanding, the political economy of sexual violence and territory can be scrutinized with the goal of implementing solutions that reflect a departure from the “effacement of critical feminist insights regarding the importance of the domestic, the personal, and the ‘every- day.”[lxxxiii] As a consequence, the “rape capital of the world” is relieved of this reductive, sensationalist, and myopic characterization.
Elias Nepa is a Rising Senior at UC Berkeley studying Sociology with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies.
References
[i] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[iii]The Uncondemned. Directed by Michele Mitchell, Nick Louvel, performances by Pierre-Richard Prosper and Sara Darehshori, Film at Eleven Media, 2015
[iv] Lene Hansen (2000) Gender, Nation, Rape: Bosnia and the Construction of Security, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3:1, 55-75, DOI: 10.1080/14616740010019848
[v] UN Security Council. 2008. Resolution 1820 (2008) [On Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations] (S/RES/1820). 5916th meeting. June 19, 2008
[vi] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[vii] Ibid
[viii] Kirby, Paul. 2012. “How is Rape a Weapon of War?.” European Jounral of International Relations 19(4): 797-821
[ix] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[x] Leatherman, Janie L. 2011. Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[xi] ANDERSON, LETITIA. 2010. “Politics by Other Means: When does Sexual Violence Threaten International Peace and Security?” International Peacekeeping 17(2): 244–60.
[xii] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[xiii] Ibid
[xiv] Ibid
[xv] Autesserre, Severine. 2014. 141 Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[xvi] Douma, Nynke, and Dorothea, Hilhorst. 2012. Fond de commerce? Sexual Violence Assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Disaster Studies Occasional Paper 02. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen University.
[xvii] Ibid
[xviii] Autesserre, Severine. 2014. 9-138 Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[xix] Eriksson Baaz, Maria, and Maria Stern. 2013. p. 97 Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Probems in the Congo and Beyond. London: Zed Books.
[xx] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[xxi] Autessere, Severine. 2012. “Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo and Their Unintended Consequences.” African Affairs 111 (443) 202-22; p 205
[xxii] Eriksson Baaz, Maria, and Maria Stern. 2010. p. 52 The Complexity of Violence: A Critical Analysis of Sexual Violencei nthe Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Sida Working Paper on Gender Basedviolence. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (The Nordic Africa Institute).
[xxiii] Douma, Nynke, AND Dorothea Hilhorst. 2012. p. 48 Fond de commerce? Sexual Violence Assistance in the Democratic Repblic of Congo. Disaster studies Occasional Paper 02. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen University.
[xxiv] Demmers, Jolle. 2014. “neoliberal Discourses on Violence: Monstrosity and Rape in Borderland War.” In Gender, Globalization and Violence: Postcolonial Conflict Zones, edited by Sandra Ponzanesi, 27-44, p. 41. New York: Routledge.
[xxv] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
[xxxi] Herdt, Tom & Titeca, Kristof. (2016). Governance with Empty Pockets: The Education Sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Governance with Empty Pockets in the DRC. Development and Change. 47. 472-494. 10.1111/dech.12235.
[xxxiii] n/a. “‘When I Grow up, I’ll Be a Teacher’ – The New Ambitions of Congolese Schoolchildren Now That School Is Free.” World Bank, World Bank Group , 16 June 2020,
[xxxv] N/a. ACAPS, 2020, Education & Child Protection Challenges in Eastern DRC; Impact of COVID-19, Conflict and Policy Reform,
[xxxviii] UN General Assembly, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1577, p. 3, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b38f0.html [accessed 10 February 2021]
[xxxix] Prashad , Jennifer. “Children of Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Humanium, 30 May 2020, www.humanium.org/en/democratic-republic-congo/.
“Sexual violence is largely associated with widespread rape, a method of violence used by combatants and military forces. Conflict in the Eastern region is a critical issue for children as they experience high levels ofsexual and gender-based violence, and researchers have found that survivors of sexual violence under the age of 18 in this region were more likely to experience gang rape and assault than adults were;” “Despite domestic laws in place to protect children fromsexual violence and the presence of the issue on the UN Security Council’s agenda, no real protection is afforded to children in peacetime and in period of conflict.”
[xli] N/a. ACAPS, 2020, Education & Child Protection Challenges in Eastern DRC; Impact of COVID-19, Conflict and Policy Reform,
[xlii] Breetzke et. al in their study of the proximity of sexual violence to schools note that “Schools are, however, necessary and permanent neighborhood institutions which feature prominently in the urban environment. Schools themselves, and the spaces around them should engender feelings of safety and security among learners and be conducive to positive social engagement and interaction. Any incidence of crime in these spaces should be of great concern since crime and violence in and around schools has been shown to affect learners physical and emotional well-being (Muschert and Peguero 2010; Espelage et al. 2013), levels of academic achievement (Wang et al. 2014), and academic progression (Ncontsa and Shumba 2013).”
Breetzke, Gregory & Fabris-Rotelli, Inger & Modiba, Jacob & Edelstein, Ian. (2019). The proximity of sexual violence to schools: evidence from a township in South Africa. GeoJournal. 10.1007/s10708-019-10093-3;
Muschert, G. W., & Peguero, A. A. (2010). The Columbine effect and school anti-violence policy. In M. Peyrot & S. L. Burns (Eds.), New approaches to social problems treatment. Research in social problems and public policy (Vol. 17, pp. 117–148). Bingley: Emerald Group PublishingLimited;
Espelage, D. L., Hong, J. S., Rao, M. A., & Low, S. (2013). Associations between peer victimization and academic performance. Theory into Practice, 52(4), 233–240;
Wang, W., Vaillancourt, T., Brittain, H. L., McDougall, P., Krygsman, A., Smith, D., et al. (2014). School climate, peer victimization, and academic achievement: Results from a multi-informant study. School Psychology Quarterly, 29(3), 360–377;
Further Nconsta and Shumba find that a loss of concentration; poor academic performance; bunking of classes; and depression result from the presence of various forms of violence in a school setting. The analysis of the effect of rape on educational outcomes is not present.
Ncontsa, V. N., & Shumba, A. (2013). The nature, causes and effects of school violence in South African high schools. South African Journal of Education, 33(3), 1–15.
[xliii] N/a. ACAPS, 2020, Education & Child Protection Challenges in Eastern DRC; Impact of COVID-19, Conflict and Policy Reform,
[xlv] Duflo, Esther, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. “The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana.” Working Paper, October 2019
Disbursement Linked Indicators are the basis of disbursement for Investment of Project Funds in the framework of the World Bank’s Aid. These must indicators must be tangible, transparent, verifiable, under government’s influence. They can be scalable to progress. This progress can be actions that lead to outputs, intermediate outcomes, and outcomes.
[li] Karashima, Noboru. “General Assembly.” Trends in the Sciences, vol. 7, no. 8, 2002, pp. 44–45, doi:10.5363/tits.7.8_44. Quotes from: (l) Take all necessary measures to prevent sexual violence and, when it occurs, bring the perpetrators to justice, provide victims with comprehensive care and facilitate their access to remedies for redress; (n) Strengthen national institutions and mechanisms responsible for coordinating human rights and monitoring the implementation of the recommendations of United Nations mechanisms. With no reference to the specifics of institutions.
[lii] Chaone Mallory. “What’s in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment): Or “Why Ecofeminism Need Not Be Ecofeminine—But So What If It Is?”.” Ethics and the Environment 23, no. 2 (2018): 11-35. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/ethicsenviro.23.2.03.
[liii] Hunnicutt, G. (2019). Gender Violence in Ecofeminist Perspective: Intersections of Animal Oppression, Patriarchy and Domination of the Earth (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351026222
[liv] Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99. Accessed March 29, 2021. doi:10.2307/3178066.
[lv] A.E. Kings. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 22, no. 1 (2017): 63-87. Accessed March 29, 2021. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.22.1.04.
[lvi] Glazebrook, Trish. “Karen Warren’s Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 7, no. 2 (2002): 12-26. Accessed March 29, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40339034.
[lvii] Chaone Mallory. “What’s in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment): Or “Why Ecofeminism Need Not Be Ecofeminine—But So What If It Is?”.” Ethics and the Environment 23, no. 2 (2018): 11-35. Accessed March 29, 2021.https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/ethicsenviro.23.2.03.
[lviii]A.E. Kings. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 22, no. 1 (2017): 63-87. Accessed March 29, 2021. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.22.1.04; Glazebrook, Trish. “Karen Warren’s Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 7, no. 2 (2002): 12-26. Accessed March 29, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40339034.
[lix] Stephanie A. Malin, Stacia Ryder & Mariana Galvão Lyra (2019) Environmental justice and natural resource extraction: intersections of power, equity and access, Environmental Sociology, 5:2, 109-116, DOI:10.1080/23251042.2019.1608420
[lx] Ibid
[lxi] Ibid; UN Security Council. 2008. Resolution 1820 (2008) [On Sexual Violence in Conflic and Pos-Conflict Situations] (S/RES/1820). 5916th meeting. June 19, 2008
[lxiii]Laudati, Ann, and Charlotte Mertens. “Resources and Rape: Congo’s (Toxic) Discursive Complex.” African Studies Review, vol. 62, no. 4, 2019, pp. 57-82., doi:10.1017/asr.2018.126
[lxiv] Claudia Seymour (2012) Ambiguous agencies: coping and survival in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,Children’s Geographies, 10:4, 373-384, DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2012.726073
[lxv] Human Rights First, “Dr. Denis Mukwege: Fighting Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” video, October 23, 2013, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-OrOE4eq2w – t=74.
[lxvii] White, Rob. (2013). Resource Extraction Leaves Something Behind: Environmental Justice and Mining. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 2. 10.5204/ijcjsd.v2i1.90.
[lxxviii] White, Rob. (2013). Resource Extraction Leaves Something Behind: Environmental Justice and Mining. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 2. 10.5204/ijcjsd.v2i1.90.
[lxxxii] Douma, Nynke, and Dorothea, Hilhorst. 2012. Fond de commerce? Sexual Violence Assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Disaster Studies Occasional Paper 02. P. 35. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen University.
[lxxxiii] Merger, Sara. “The Fetishization of Sexual Violence in International Security.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 149-159. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1092/isq/sqw003
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