No Land, No Rights: Environmental Refugees and Human Rights رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This study confronts the failure of the contemporary international legal system to provide legal status and protection for people displaced across borders by environmental disasters, a group increasingly known as "environmental refugees." Employing a descriptive-analytical methodology, the research combines a doctrinal analysis of international law with a comparative case study of two starkly different crises: the slow onset climate threat facing Tuvalu and the complex, anthropogenic ecocide unfolding in the Brazilian Amazon. The analysis focuses on individuals forced to cross international borders, with the populations of the two case sites serving as the primary samples. It draws data from a systematic review of legal instruments, jurisprudence, international reports, and scholarly literature. The research concludes that the 1951 Refugee Convention is structurally incapable of addressing environmental displacement due to its restrictive, persecution-based definition, creating a profound "protection gap." This legal void is shown to be a direct catalyst for a cascade of gross human rights violations, systematically denying the displaced their right to a life with dignity, adequate food, water, housing, and non-discrimination. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that the emerging "protection patchwork" of soft law and regional agreements is inconsistent, lacks legal certainty, and perpetuates injustice. Based on these findings, the study recommends moving beyond the 1951 Convention to develop a new, standalone international framework grounded in state responsibility and human rights principles. Key recommendations include establishing guiding principles for rights-based mobility agreements to prevent inequitable bilateral deals; urging the UN Human Rights Committee to clarify non-refoulement obligations for slow-onset disasters; and operationalizing an accountability framework that links the Loss and Damage Fund to the "polluter pays" principle while enforcing the extraterritorial human rights obligations of states and corporations