Communities under imminent threat from rising sea level, floods and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday, as the region’s foremost human rights body holds a first-of-its-kind hearing on how climate catastrophe is driving forced migration across the Americas.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear from people on the frontline of the climate emergency in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia, as part of a special hearing sought by human rights groups in Latin America, the US and the Caribbean.
A growing number of migrants and refugees trying to seek sanctuary in the US and other countries are being displaced by hurricanes, heatwaves and drought, as well as slow-onset climate disasters such as ocean acidification, coastal erosion and desertification.
The witnesses will include Higinio Alberto Ramírez from Honduras, who last year suffered life-altering injuries when a fire razed a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, killing 43 migrants from Latin America. Ramírez is from Cedeño, a coastal fishing town that is disappearing under rising sea levels, and was trying to reach the US to pay off family debts after tidal waves destroyed the shrimp nursery where he and his father worked.
“The case of the Ramírez family is a tragic reminder that forced migration is not an issue for the future. Sea levels have been rising due to climate change for decades. States and humanitarian systems must catch up and ensure that protections are in place,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Mexico based Institute for Women in Migration (Imumi), one of the groups which requested the hearing.
The climate crisis poses an existential threat to coastal communities such as Cedeño, where at least 300 metres of land – and with it scores of hotels, restaurants, shops, schools and homes – have been submerged over the past few years amid increasingly frequent and destructive tidal floods and storm surges.
Honduras, and the vast majority of countries and island nations in the region, have contributed minimally to the greenhouse gases driving global heating. Yet they are among some of the world’s most vulnerable, thanks to a mix of geography, poverty, political instability and limited access to climate adaptation and mitigation measures.
Thursday’s hearing is part of a push for the IACHR to formally recognise forced displacement as a consequence of the climate crisis, to carry out country visits, and to establish guidelines to protect people internally displaced and those seeking refuge in other countries.
As immigration and refugee policies in the US, Mexico and beyond become increasingly cruel, and the criteria for asylum increasingly narrow, experts will also push for the IACHR to remind states of the non-refoulement principle, which prohibits returning displaced persons to situations that put their lives or freedoms at risk due to the effects of climate crisis.
“The testimonies of people directly impacted show that the slow and rapid onset effects of climate change are negatively impacting the most basic rights of entire communities, particularly those already marginalized and racialized, and the so-called sacrifice zones,” said Adeline Neau, Amnesty International’s researcher for Central America.
“We ask the IACHR to show the states the correct path putting human rights at the center, instead of more measures of contention, detention and criminalization measures that only increase the risks to the lives of these people.”