Foregrounding Displacement in the Treaty on the Protection of Persons in the event of Disasters

This week, the leaders of the Pacific Island States will have their annual meeting at the Pacific Islands Forum to discuss key issues impacting the region. In recent years, leaders have adopted significant regional declarations and frameworks concerning the impacts of climate change and disasters, including the 2023 Declaration on the Continuity of Statehood and the Protection of Persons in the Face of Climate Change-Related Sea-Level Rise and the 2023 Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility.

A new global development is therefore of particular relevance. In 2027, States are expected to adopt the first-ever global treaty on the Protection of Persons in the event of Disasters, based on the International Law Commission’s 2016 Draft Articles of the same name. Motivated in part by ‘the increasing number of disasters in the world, as well as their intensity and impact on affected populations’, the treaty will address ‘the need for a comprehensive global legal regime to better address the protection of persons in the event of disasters’, including through greater international cooperation on disaster risk reduction, response and recovery.

Following a series of deliberations by the UN General Assembly’s Sixth Committee in 2023 and 2024, States have until 31 December 2025 to submit proposed amendments to the text of the Draft Articles. A working group of the Sixth Committee will then use these submissions to prepare a consolidated text for the treaty negotiations, with the intention that a legally binding instrument will be adopted by the end of 2027.

Disaster displacement

The Draft Articles barely mention displacement at all. While ‘mass displacement’ is mentioned as a possible defining characteristic of disasters, the rights and needs of displaced persons as well as and the role that displacement through well-planned evacuations and relocations can play in averting harm are strikingly absent. This is surprising given that their impetus was the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which killed around 240,000 people in 12 States and left more than one million people displaced. In 2024, there were 65.8 million internal displacements globally. Nearly 70 per cent of them – 45.8 million – were linked to disasters. This is a trend that has been relatively consistent for more than a decade. Climate change magnifies the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, and it is anticipated that displacement in the context of both sudden- and slow-onset disasters will increase.

In a new Policy Brief, we argue that in transforming the Draft Articles into a new treaty, ‘displacement’ should feature beyond the ‘disaster’ definition alone. Displacement is a common consequence of disasters with often far-reaching impacts on people’s rights, livelihoods and well-being. On the one hand, displacement can generate and exacerbate particular risks for individuals and communities, as well as aggravate existing risks associated with disasters. On the other hand, displacement – through well-planned evacuations or relocations – can serve as a proactive risk reduction strategy. If implemented in a rights-based manner, such measures not only save lives but also reduce long-term exposure to hazards.

Our Policy Brief argues that the treaty should expressly reference displacement and States’ obligations to protect the human rights of displaced people. This is essential to fully realise the treaty’s purpose of facilitating adequate and effective responses to disasters and the reduction of disaster risks, ‘so as to meet the essential needs of the persons concerned, with full respect for their rights’ (art 2). Without explicit recognition, the treaty risks overlooking both the specific risks displacement can generate or exacerbate for displaced persons, and its life-saving potential as a proactive risk reduction strategy when implemented through well-planned, rights-based evacuations and relocations. Incorporating these dimensions into the treaty ensures that displacement is a central concern in disaster response and risk reduction.

Recommendations

The Policy Brief makes four core recommendations. First, the new treaty should expressly acknowledge the risk of displacement in the context of disasters. While the need to avert displacement and the obligation to protect those who are displaced are implied within the Draft Articles, several States have argued that these references should be made explicit (para 18). Incorporating express references to displacement would ensure that the rights and needs of displaced people are placed at the centre of disaster risk reduction, response and recovery.

Second, the treaty should acknowledge the life-saving role that well-planned evacuations and relocations can play as proactive disaster risk reduction measures. Evacuations and planned relocations are increasingly central to national and local disaster risk reduction strategies, designed to move people safely away from anticipated or immediate threats ‘to save lives and minimize exposure to harm’. Around the world, evacuations occur on a near-daily basis in anticipation of or in response to disasters. Between 2015 and 2022 alone, 2.1 billion people were pre-emptively evacuated. While planned relocations are less common—and more complex—many hundreds of examples have been documented globally. Integrating evacuation and relocation planning into disaster risk reduction and management strategies is therefore essential if States are to meet their responsibilities under international law to protect persons in the event of disasters.

Third, the treaty should expressly acknowledge States’ duties to protect the human rights of displaced people. The Draft Articles stipulate that States must respect and protect the ‘inherent dignity of the human person … in the event of disasters’ and ensure that human rights are respected and protected ‘in accordance with international law’, with ‘the needs of the particularly vulnerable’ taken into account (arts 4–6). However, they stop short of expressly recognising States’ duties toward displaced people in the context of disasters. An express acknowledgment would draw greater attention to the specific needs and rights of displaced persons and promote a rights-based approach to displacement. As Brazil stressed during discussions in the Sixth Committee, ‘it [is] important never to lose sight of the human rights perspective, particularly when addressing mass displacement caused by disasters’ (para. 18).

Fourth, the treaty should acknowledge that assistance with (cross-border) evacuations and the provision of humanitarian and/or protection visas can be important forms of international cooperation. States have a duty to cooperate in all stages of the disaster cycle (art 7), which should include both the protection of displaced persons and the support of well-planned evacuations and relocations as proactive risk reduction measures. Where necessary, cooperation should extend to facilitating cross-border evacuations. Disasters can drive people to move across international borders in search of safety, underscoring the need to recognise and plan for the possibility of cross-border displacement. More durable migration opportunities can also play an important role in enabling people to move away from existing or anticipated hazards in a planned and proactive manner. Such pathways, sometimes described as a form of adaptation to climate change, can ‘provide a release valve for people who might otherwise be at risk of displacement’, ‘reduce pressure on limited resources’ and help to ‘safeguard against involuntary immobility’.

Growing recognition of disaster displacement in international law 

The Policy Brief recognises that the Draft Articles provide a high-level compilation of the relevant legal principles guiding States’ responses in disasters, with occasional illustrative examples, and that their scope is far broader than displacement alone. However, neither of these facts should be barriers to greater inclusion of displacement in the treaty. The Draft Articles are intended as a starting point for the treaty text. States are invited to submit ‘proposals for amendments to the draft articles, with a view to preparing the consolidated text that will serve as the basis for the negotiations’, which means that the treaty could end up expanding well beyond them. 

Since the Draft Articles’ conclusion in 2016, States have increasingly come to recognise the impacts of disasters on displacement and the importance of safeguarding human rights in relevant international and regional instruments. Incorporating explicit references to displacement would therefore bring the treaty into closer alignment with existing international principles and frameworks, reflecting this growing recognition and ensuring that disaster responses adequately consider the rights and needs of displaced persons.

This also provides an opportunity for the treaty to draw upon and connect to existing international and regional frameworks that address displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. These include the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, the Nansen Initiative’s Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the context of Disasters and Climate Change, the Sydney Declaration of Principles on the Protection of Persons Displaced in the context of Sea Level Rise, the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, and the Kaldor Centre Principles on Climate Mobility. By building on these instruments, the treaty does not need to articulate granulated principles or practices nor disproportionately emphasise displacement. Instead, it can maintain its broad and principled orientation while ensuring integration with emerging international norms and practices on disaster displacement.

It is also worth recalling that in its recent Advisory Opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change, the International Court of Justice acknowledged that displacement is among many ‘severe and far-reaching’ consequences of climate change that pose an ‘urgent and existential threat’ (para 73). Affirming existing jurisprudence, it recognised that ‘conditions resulting from climate change which are likely to endanger the lives of individuals may lead [people] to seek safety in another country or prevent them from returning to their own’, and that States’ non-refoulement obligations are engaged in this context when ‘there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm to the right to life’ (para 378). The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Advisory Opinion on the climate emergency and human rights similarly acknowledged this principle, importantly also appreciating that underlying structural risks can both result in and compound the adverse impacts of displacement. 

As States work toward negotiating the world’s first global treaty on the protection of persons in the event of disasters, there is a critical opportunity to foreground displacement within disaster risk reduction and response. Explicitly integrating displacement as both a potential threat to human rights and a proactive risk reduction strategy would enable the new treaty to respond more effectively to the realities of disaster-related displacement, ensuring that the rights and needs of displaced persons are recognised in disaster risk reduction and response efforts.