An Assessment of Climate Refugees: With Special Attention to Feminist Perspective

Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons, who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or chose to do so, either provisionally or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad. It is said that by the end of 2050, this constant exhaustion and volatility towards climate migrants, there will be 200 million climate refugees with no protection from the harsh circumstances they will have to face. There is a major culture lag in the acceptance of these refugees owing to nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments. One of the major stakeholders in this tussle between survival and displacement are women. Due to the patriarchal nature of the society, women are forced to circumvent and mitigate the consequences of climate induced displacement. In this attempt, there is a large-scale violation of their rights such as sanitation, health and educational rights which further restricts movement in societal structure. This paper aims to highlight the feminist perspective of the struggles of climate refugees and attempts to highlight the unanswered questions that are put forth time and again. It also seeks to provide suggestions and answers to aid in safeguarding the rights of these people to uphold the morals and ethics which we as a society have vowed to uphold.