Akansha Chaudhary, O.P Jindal Global University
ABSTRACT
The rise in the impacts of climate change has garnered attention of the world as it has started affecting our daily lives. This has resulted in a series of conferences and agreements amongst the leaders and protests to undertake immediate action. The primary conversation between International Law and climate occurs in the ambit of human rights which has been discussed through various reports and resolutions. This has also led to a change in legislations primarily concerning the acceptance of citizens of countries which bear the brunt of the phenomenon before the rest of the world. However, in Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand, the Human Rights Committee stated that Mr. Teitiota cannot take the defence of Right to Life as a defence for the cross-border migration from the drowning island of Kiribati as he did not fulfil the concerned grounds. This gives rise to the question of whether the pre-existing grounds for invoking right to life disregards the very nature of climate change which may not affect all persons equally thereby preventing the affected persons from exercising the inherent right. This paper aims to ascertain whether the threshold of Human Rights under International Law is a sufficient framework to provide legal protection to climate induced cross border migration through the judgement of Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand and analyses the position of climate change in law.
Keywords: Human Rights law, climate change, cross-border, human mobility, non-refoulment
