UN makes a landmark decision about the victims of climate change

United Nations made a landmark ruling saying that those people vulnerable or affected by climate change cannot be returned to their countries might be threatened by climate change. They must be treated as refugees. “Without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to a violation of their rights,” UN says.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruling was made regarding Ioane Teitiota case, a man who had to flee his home on the island of Kiribati because of the threat of rising sea levels and brought a case against New Zealand after this family were denied asylum in 2015. Kiribati is a small island in the Pacific Ocean threatened by rising sea levels that are expected to be uninhabitable by 2050, becoming the first country to disappear under the sea. Teitiota has been recognized as the first climate refugee.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was created in 1950, after the Second World War, to assist refugees who flee countries as a result of a conflict. UN warns that the world must prepare for millions of new refugees affected by climate change, UN Commissioner Filippo Grandi said in an interview with Reuters at Davos. There were about 18.8 million new internal refugees victims of disaster recorded in 2017, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.