Several reflections on the displacement in the Sahel due to climate change

Landscape of Sahel, 16 October 2005, Daniel Tiveau, CIFOR, Creative Commons.

Since the droughts of the 1970s, the Sahel has experienced significant poverty. It is now a region where 80% of the population lives in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $1.90 a day. For decades, the region has experienced chronic food shortages with up to 18 million people facing severe food insecurity over the summer of 2022 – the highest number since 2014.

Such food shortages have been linked to desertification, flooding and other impacts of climate change. Environmental degradation has become a serious problem in the Sahel, which is disproportionately impacted by climate change, with temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, and the situation is further aggravated by political instability.

It is, therefore, consequential that this entire situation has produced – and is producing – a massive displacement of populations within the region.

While a number of circumstances cause displacement in the region, climate change is affecting migratory movements in many different ways, including influencing the probability that people will move and the conditions in which they do so. For example, many farmers in Burkina Faso, a country affected by changes in rainfall, migrate to seek alternative sources of income during the agricultural off-season.

While the need to migrate in response to reduced resource availability in the Sahel is growing, the COVID-19 pandemic, through border closures and other movement restrictions, has limited access to these forms of migration.

This and other climate change-related transformations in the ways in which entire populations migrate in the Sahel present specific legal and policy challenges that affect the human rights of the immigrants.

Many basic human rights are challenged for the displaced in the Sahel because of climate change. Among them: access to food, land and adequate housing, rights to water, sanitation and education, with a huge number of school closing on annual basis, as well as the right to have access to decent works.

The international community has adopted significant global initiatives that provide States with a framework within which to address the interconnection between migration and climate change. Particularly notable, are the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), which provide guidance related to natural disasters, and those related to climate change. The Sendai Framework is guided by the understanding that the purpose of disaster risk management includes promoting and protecting all human rights.

In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, States identified climate change as one of the utmost contemporary challenges and committed to adopt urgent action to combat climate change and its consequences. States also committed to “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies”.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) reaffirms States’ commitment to respecting, protecting, and fulfilling the human rights of all migrants, regardless of status. In Objective 2 of the GCM, States commit to minimize the adverse drivers factors obliging people to leave their country of origin, including climate change. In Objective 5, on increasing the availability of paths for regular migration, States also commit to develop existing practices for admission and residence for migrants obliged to leave their countries of origin owing to sudden-onset natural disasters.

In this context, States further commit to identify, develop and strengthen solutions for migrants obliged to flee their countries of origin owing to slow-onset natural disasters, the adverse effects of climate change, and environmental degradation.

Analysing the adopted measures at the continental and regional level, in its 2014 “Strategy” on the Sahel, the African Union (AU) completely neglected the interrelation between climate change and migration, focusing mostly on political insecurity in the region. The AU did, however, recognize the degradation of the environment caused by climate change and other natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Certainly, it is time for the AU to elaborate a new study that takes into consideration the growing impact of climate change on migration in the region.

This is not to minimize the significance of the efforts that the AU has made, such as the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGW). Launched by the AU in 2007, the GGW aims to restore 100 million hectares of presently degraded land across the Sahel, confiscate 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030.

“This and other climate change-related transformations in the ways in which entire populations migrate in the Sahel present specific legal and policy challenges that affect the human rights of the immigrants.”

Additionally, the AU has noted that in situations of natural disaster, the right to freedom of movement and residence of persons, as enshrined in Article 12(1) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, should not be restricted unless the law provides restrictions that are essential to respond to threats to the health, safety or life of affected persons. Yet, as this initiative is still at an embryonic stage, the adverse repercussions of climate change in the Sahel continue driving entire villages to migrate and exacerbating situations of vulnerability.

Adopting a human rights-based approach to the adverse consequences of climate change is crucial to finding equitable and sustainable solutions. This means, for example, addressing and reducing situations of vulnerability and protecting the principles of non-discrimination. In this framework, international (through, for example, the Sahel Alliance) and regional cooperation (through the G5 Sahel) should be strengthened, with the provision of adequate finance to address the human rights impacts of climate change.

It is advisable that States, both within and outside of the Sahel, integrate migration considerations into climate action, prioritizing the human rights of migrants and their participation in and leadership of such action.

The same states should also cooperate to support safe, regular, and orderly migration that respects and protects migrants’ human rights in the country of origin, country/ies of transit, as well as in the country of destination. This cooperation should include ensuring that measures of cooperation on migration governance in the area are consistent with their obligations under international law. Concerned states should also develop sustainable health, education, and social services, accessible to all, including displaced persons.

There is certainly more to be done to have a complete understanding of the circumstances in which people in the Sahel migrate in the context of climate change and the interventions sought to promote and protect their human rights from the adverse consequences of climate change. This should be coupled with continuing to evaluate and monitor the human rights consequences of climate change action, understanding the extent to which these actions address the adverse human rights consequences of climate change.