This is a volume focusing on internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change in Asia and the Pacific. It is the product of two years of research, coordinated by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, in collaboration with academic partners based in universities and research institutions across the region. The focus on internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change is justified by the fact that every year, an average of 24 million people are newly internally displaced in the context of natural hazard events worldwide, with more than 75 per cent of such displacement taking place in the region (IDMC 2019). As with any form of displacement, displacement in the context of disasters and climate change has significant implications for the enjoyment of human rights.
It, therefore, follows that the research, commencing on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (the Guiding Principles), adopts a human rights-based approach. The Guiding Principles were developed to address a recognised lack of clarity about how states ought to address the challenges presented by internal displacement (UN Commission on Human Rights 1991). A product of extensive academic research and widespread consultation, the Guiding Principles do not create new law, nor do they purport to bind states (Kälin 1998). Rather, they represent a consolidation of international law that is relevant to the situation of internally displaced persons. The key sources include international refugee law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law (Kälin 2008). Paragraph two of the Introduction to the Guiding Principles defines internally displaced persons as:
[P]ersons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.
Although the Guiding Principles are thus clearly as applicable to persons displaced in the context of disasters as they are to those displaced in the context of armed conflict, the 20 years that have followed since the adoption of the Guiding Principles have seen an overwhelming focus on the latter, with more limited engagement with how these principles apply when people have to leave their homes in situations triggered by floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, and so forth. At the same time, more people are displaced every year by disasters than they are by armed conflict (IDMC 2019). Chapter 2 considers this state of affairs in more detail.
The starting point for this volume is that the Guiding Principles are effective in providing a coherent framework for thinking about the kinds of measures that may be required to prevent and prepare for displacement, protect people during evacuation and throughout displacement, and facilitate durable solutions in the context of disasters and climate change, but that, as with conflict-related displacement, these principles need to be integrated into national and sub-national law, policy, and practice in order to have an impact. Additionally, the Guiding Principles must be complemented by more detailed standards and guidelines, including from the field of disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM), climate change adaptation (CCA), and sustainable development.
Consequently, the research entailed consolidation of key standards and guidelines relevant to displacement in the context of disasters and climate change (see Scott 2019a), and also examined national legal and policy frameworks relating to DRRM and CCA in the eight countries that are the focus of this volume. 1 The countries include Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands.
Although examination of other sectoral law and policy would have added further depth to the analysis, it was recognised at an early stage in the project that analysing even this narrow set of legal and policy documents relating to DRRM and CCA was already a significant undertaking, and that analysis of other frameworks could form the basis for future projects. Indeed, as noted in the conclusion to this volume, the review of law and policy, together with insights from the case studies described in more detail below, points to a clear research agenda focusing on the intersection of displacement, sustainable development and climate change adaptation, and examining the role of authorities and other actors involved in urban planning, housing policy, environment, and sustainable development.
Research results show extensive integration of human rights principles in general, as well as key international standards and guidelines relating to disaster displacement in particular, across legal and policy frameworks in the region, although with variations between countries. At the same time, the research indicates that displacement is not consistently integrated into the legal and policy frameworks relating to DRRM and was even less integrated into legal and policy documents focusing on CCA. Instead, displacement tends to appear in scattered references to elements such as evacuation, reconstruction, and planned relocation. Thus, with some exceptions, most of the eight countries considered in this volume do not have a consistent legal and policy framework that addresses the prevention of and preparedness for displacement, protection during evacuation and throughout displacement, and facilitation of durable solutions. There remains considerable scope for integrating displacement into national-level legal and policy frameworks, including through consistent references to key international standards and guidelines.
However, integration of key international standards and guidelines into domestic legal and policy frameworks does not, in itself, guarantee that states will take effective measures to address the issues. Implementation of both international and national level law and policy is a perennial issue, and this research initiative, therefore, set out to examine the extent to which both international and national level law and policy actually played a role in specific instances of disaster displacement. Identifying examples of good practice at the local level, our research also points to cases where sub-national plans, procedures, and practices could be more attuned to displacement risk, and particularly in relation to the differential exposure and vulnerability of people in situations of potential vulnerability, including women, persons with disabilities, and people living in informal settlements, amongst others.
In sum, the research that is presented in this volume addresses two questions. First, it enquires into the extent to which key international standards and guidelines relating to displacement in the context of disasters and climate change are integrated into domestic legal and policy frameworks. Second, and more in focus in this volume, it asks about how these frameworks contribute towards the prevention of and preparedness for displacement, protecting people during evacuation and throughout displacement, and facilitating durable solutions in particular sub-national contexts. The compilation of eight case studies contributes new insight into the phenomenon of displacement in the context of disasters and climate change and the role of law and policy in addressing this challenge.
Internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change
This volume is concerned with displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. However, these two phenomena are not of the same order. Climate change is a term used to describe ‘a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer’ (IPCC 2018). One consequence of climate change is that some natural hazard events, such as floods, heatwaves, and droughts, are becoming more frequent and intense in some parts of the world (IPCC 2018). Other consequences of climate change include rising sea levels and associated salination of soil and freshwater resources, as well as changes in seasonal rainfall and temperatures. Not only does climate change contribute to making hazard events and processes more frequent and intense, but it also contributes in direct and indirect ways towards increasing exposure and vulnerability (IPCC 2014).
Thus, climate change can be understood as an amplifier of natural hazards (IPCC 2018). The phenomenon itself is one step removed from the human impacts. A human rights-based approach to displacement in the context of disasters and climate change is concerned with the human experience of displacement, and the connection such displacement has to certain drivers of displacement. Cyclones, floods, rising sea levels, and so forth, can all be drivers of displacement, as can economic, political, social, and historical factors. Climate change, as the Foresight report (Government Office for Science 2011) made clear, amplifies these drivers in myriad ways. Focusing on disasters helps to bring attention closer to the human factors that are in play when people are displaced in the context of disasters and climate change. However, as discussed further in the conclusion to this volume, additional research avenues have opened up that can explore, for instance, the impacts of climate change adaptation measures as a cause of displacement.
Although slower onset processes such as drought, changes in seasonal rainfall and temperature, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise also have direct human rights implications, the relationship between these phenomena and displacement is more difficult to trace than the displacement that arises in the context of more sudden-onset disasters associated with floods, cyclones, and other hazards. For the latter, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre has developed a robust methodology for measuring the scale of displacement (IDMC 2020a). For the former, methodologies that can accurately trace the role played by slower onset processes in individual decisions to move are still being developed (IDMC 2020b). The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, will make displacement in the context of slower onset disasters the focus of her 2020 address to the UN General Assembly (UN OHCHR 2020). This, too, opens an avenue for further research, as discussed in the conclusion to this volume.
Consequently, the case studies that make up the core of this volume all focus on displacement in the context of more sudden-onset hazard events, while remaining keenly aware of the direct and indirect role that climate change is playing in global, regional, and national displac...
