Environmental Migrants: A Case Study Of Refugees In Dadaab Camps

Abstract

In a time of rapid Environmental Changes, this project focuses on the problem of bridging the widening disparity between universal human rights and the changing face of migration. Environmental change continuously displaces people through floods, drought, famine, rising sea levels, desertification, and agricultural loss. However, as the project's interpretivist approach illustrates the international legal system and local migration regulations have been unable to keep pace with these developments, providing little to no protection to these disadvantaged forced environmental refugees. This project's main contribution includes a conceptualization of the problem of forced environmental migration and its unique technique in identifying categories of people displaced by environmental stress. Its core premise is that people displaced by environmental stress should have the right to movement and adaptation assistance, but then again, these rights are not sufficiently backed or protected by international law. Whereas refugees escaping violence profit from the continuation of long-standing global institutions and legal protections, protecting individuals impacted by environmental disasters do not enjoy such legal protection. Its study indicates that while a few recent advancements in law and policy have the opportunity to mitigate some of the difficulties posed by individuals displaced by the environment. The present international framework and domestic policy fail to satisfy the fundamental normative and practical needs associated with an ethically acceptable response to involuntary environmental migration. The research explores the root causes of this challenge and concludes that the problems posed to the international community by forced environmental migration may be deeper than the field has previously thought. Indeed, it believes that the multi-causal nature of migration may contribute to the disparities between the rights of the individuals displaced by environmental disasters and their manifestation under the existing global framework. This study demonstrated that migration is a multi-cause event, that changes in the environment would impact migration through its influences on drivers, and that each migrant is susceptible to various drivers and motives for moving or relocating. Including some that may or may not be impacted by environmental change; as a result, an acceptable worldwide policy for 'environmental migrants' is deemed unfitting. There are, however, established international partnerships, legal agreements, and institutional structures. 'Soft law' techniques, such as the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and, perhaps, the recently proposed Nansen Principles, are examples of 'bottom-up' approaches that establish agreement while allowing for adaptive and personalized adoption by governments.