Researchers urge countries to absorb people fleeing due to climate change

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras have suggested a normative framework to address cross-border migration due to climate change under which asylum seekers are absorbed into host countries and not forced to return. The team has developed a normative framework which highlights that the prevailing international law is barely adequate to protect the entire class of forcibly-displaced people.

The research has also been published in the reputed peer-reviewed journal WIRES Climate Change. According to the researchers, with climate change intensifying the push to migrate, all asylum seekers have to be absorbed into host countries under the principle of 'non refoulement', the practice of not forcing refugees and asylum seekers to return to a country where they could face persecution.

This will ensure that refugees are not forced to return to their home countries to face harm, they said.

Asylum seekers from vulnerable zones, they underlined, must be absorbed in host countries in proportion to their greenhouse gas emissions. Given the severity of the anticipated Global Environmental Changes and associated harms, taking early and appropriate action is vital.

However, the question "did this person migrate because of climate change?" may never be fully answered, they said.