Environmental Migration in Regional Human Rights Courts: A Lifeboat from the “Sinking Vessel”

Publication Title

Tennessee Law Review

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

According to various estimates, millions of people are at risk of being driven from their homes by climate change and other environmental factors in the coming decades. A set of cases that have arisen in international and domestic courts concern "environmental non-refoulement" a jurisprudence seeking to block the removal of individuals to countries where they will face significant human rights risk due to environmental degradation. However, while human rights courts in the European, Inter-American, and African systems have confronted a number of non-refoulement claims and have made significant contributions to jurisprudence in this area, these regional courts all have yet to hear an environmental non-refoulement case. In this article, I examine what these courts will and should do when presented with such a claim.

The leading international and domestic cases on environmental non-refoulement have mostly recognized the grave human rights threats posed by environmental crises but denied relief under the particular sets of facts presented. In making these decisions, courts have varied in their consideration of key questions, including the required imminence of the harm to human rights, the necessary specificity of the harm, and the special protections available to groups in vulnerable situations. By examining both the non-refoulement and environmental jurisprudence of regional human rights courts, I argue that with respect to these three elements imminence, specificity, and vulnerability such courts would apply a more flexible standard than international and domestic courts and thus would protect more people from the human rights harms caused by environmental crises. I further argue that environmental non-refoulement rulings from regional human rights courts will make a significant contribution to environmental jurisprudence and address migration driven by environmental factors.

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Lexis

SSRN

Westlaw

Recommended Citation

Monica V. Iyer, Environmental Migration in Regional Human Rights Courts: A Lifeboat from the “Sinking Vessel,” 91 Tenn. L. Rev. 363 (2024).

Volume

91

First Page

363

Last Page

429

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