CLIMATE REFUGEES AND STATELESSNESS: THE GAPS IN INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW

The problem of climate change has turned into a significant contributor to human displacement, as the rising sea level, severe weather patterns, drought, and environmental degradation dislocate millions of people.The international legal framework however is ill placed to safeguard individuals who are escaping the environmental damage.The people who have been displaced by the effects of climate change are not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the current humanitarian and human rights frameworks do not provide dependable intercountry protection and solutions to climate-induced statelessness.This paper will be looking at how mobility is becoming a threat to legal identity, especially the Small Island Developing States that are being affected by climate change in terms of losing habitable land.It reveals huge normative and institutional loopholes, such as the lack of an understanding of what a climate refugee is, and the confusion of statehood that lacks territory, through case studies in Bangladesh, Tuvalu, the Torres Strait Islands, Vanuatu and Louisiana.It demands specific policies like climate mobility convention, expansionary definition of refugees, acknowledgement of statehood that is deterritorialised and global governance.