Advancing Human Rights in Responses to Climate Displacement and Human Mobility: Regional Perspectives

The parallel event was organized by the Climate, Migration, and Displacement Platform (CMDP) and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and aimed to discuss regional priorities for advancing the respect of human rights in the context of climate change, displacement, and migration.

About this Event

Since 2018, CMDP has brought together civil society organizations, climate and migrant justice advocates, and experts from across regions, levels of governance, and thematic areas, to discuss ways to better address climate change impacts on human mobility. In 2023, in partnership with FES, CMDP’s Steering Group members organized four regional consultations—in Latin America, the Pacific, Africa, and South & Southeast Asia—that identified regional priorities to addressing climate-related displacement risk, displacement, migration, planned relocation and immobility.

After bringing priority messages to the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB58), delegates to each consultation shared them during the parallel event to the 53rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The presentations and discussions considered how human rights mechanisms together with other multilateral processes can support these efforts with appropriate urgency and sufficient resources. In addition to the regional consultations, panellists’ presentations were informed by relevant work of international and regional human rights bodies and mechanisms and by developments in UNFCCC negotiations and the Paris Agreement Global Stocktaking.

Panelists

• Esther Martins, Plataforma Semiaridos, Brazil
• Maina Talia, Kioa Island Community Organization/Tuvalu CAN, Tuvalu
• Mamadou Goïta, Pan-African Network in Defense of Migrant Rights (PANiDMR), Mali
• Mary Obiero, Church World Service (CWS), Kenya
• Shakirul Islam, Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP), Bangladesh 

Discussants: Benjamin Schachter, OHCHR & Laurel Townhead, QUNO

Moderator: Evalyn Tennant