by Pamela Readhead
At least one billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050 as the effects of climate change exacerbate the conflicts, natural disasters and development projects that drive displacement, according to a new report by Christian Aid.
Migration prompted by conflict and natural disaster has attracted worldwide media coverage, but The Human Tide: the real migration crisis (PDF, 747KB) warns that an increasing number of people are made homeless by large-scale development projects. "There are an estimated 163 million people forcibly displaced in the world, 105 million of whom moved due to projects such as dams, roads, factories, palm oil plantations and wildlife reserves," the report says.
Security experts fear that this new migration will fuel existing conflicts and generate new ones in the areas of the world - the poorest - where resources are most scarce. There are particular concerns that the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) will rise dramatically in the coming decades. Christian Aid warns that a world of many more Darfurs, where there are two million IDPs, is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario.
According to a global survey released in April by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Middle East has been particularly hard hit by new displacements. More people are currently forced to flee their homes in Iraq than in any other country in the world - more than 700,000 people have been uprooted by the ongoing sectarian violence and military operations since February 2006 - and many remain within Iraq’s borders.
Last week (11 May 2007) the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett warned that climate-driven conflicts were already under way in Africa. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Mrs Beckett said the Darfur crisis was a "struggle between nomadic and pastoral communities for resources made more scarce through a changing climate."
There are an estimated 163 million people forcibly displaced in the world, 105 million of whom moved due to projects such as dams, roads, factories, palm oil plantations and wildlife reserves
A report from the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) examines patterns of forced migration, responses by humanitarian actors and policy options. The study focuses on those displaced by conflict, violence and human rights abuses - including refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people and returnees.
The report finds that although global refugee and asylum seeker numbers have recently fallen to less than ten million, the number of IDPs has risen to 25 million as rich states have begun trying to control forced migration closer to countries and regions of origin. It says that IDPs are often worse off than refugees because there are no specific international legal instruments to protect them, or organisations mandated to do so. The researchers also found (PDF, 85.5KB) that there was conflict between some European Union policy initiatives designed to prevent secondary migration to Europe, and others that aim to alleviate pressures on conflict regions
Researchers at COMPAS were also commissioned by the Department for International Development (DFID) to write a report on UK migration policy. Developing DFID's policy approach towards refugees and internally displaced persons (PDF, 1.65MB), written by Professor Stephen Castles and Nicholas Van Hear covers some of the key issues related to new policy initiatives whereby asylum processing would take place nearer to the migrants' country of origin. Two workshops have been held, involving a range of researchers, policy makers and practitioners, and a number of reports and papers have been produced.
The implications of the EU policy proposals for African states are the focus of research by ESRC-funded DPhil student Alexander Betts and James Milner. Their paper on The Externalisation of EU Asylum Policy: The Position of African States (PDF, 471KB) draws on the example of Tanzania to argue that unless European states adapt the way they deliver development aid and their implicit assumptions about the African state, there is a risk of undermining rather than enhancing refugee protection.