CLIMATE MIGRANTS AND THE LIMITS OF REFUGEE STATUS

With the end of bipolarism between the USA and USSR, there was a displacement from strategic studies to security studies as well as from the locus of the state to the individual. Conflicts began to occur no longer between states over issues of power, but within states over issues of socio-economic inequality. As a result, threats to human security have gained a new record, having, in recent years, according to the World Migration Report 2020, forced about 272 million people to leave their countries for various reasons. Environmental migration is the one that has contributed most recently to a greater debate in the field of forced migration. Increasingly intense climate change, especially the rise in the average sea level and droughts, has put pressure on the territory and livelihoods of certain states, and may ultimately lead to their disappearance. As a consequence, we see the emergence of migratory flows and an unchecked increase in the number of internally displaced persons and on a global scale. Moreover, threats to human security in a given State are not confined to its physical borders, but have repercussions at the international level. The reality of migration flows thus highlights serious human rights violations, also calling into question principles such as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and, even more so, the limits of the Refugee Statute in defending the humanitarian rights of the climate migrant.