Human Rights Law, Refugee and Migration Law, and Environmental Law: Exploring their Contributions in the Context of ‘Environmental Migration’

Author(s):  
Michèle Morel
2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (905) ◽  
pp. 569-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Duhaime ◽  
Andréanne Thibault

AbstractThis article looks at the issue of enforced disappearances of migrants during their migratory journey or once they have reached their destination, a subject yet to be addressed in the literature. It examines how the legal and analytical framework provided by international human rights law and migration law applies to enforced disappearances of migrants. It then reviews the factors that contribute to this phenomenon in different contexts, including the disappearance of migrants for political reasons, those that take place in detention and deportation processes and those that take place within the context of migrant smuggling and trafficking.


Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert

This chapter focuses on the connection between the international legal framework governing the conservation of natural resources and human rights law. The objective is to examine the potential synergies between international environmental law and human rights when it comes to the protection of natural resources. To do so, it concentrates on three main areas of potential convergence. It first focuses on the pollution of natural resources and analyses how human rights law offers a potential platform to seek remedies for the victims of pollution. It next concentrates on the conservation of natural resources, particularly on the interconnection between protected areas, biodiversity, and human rights law. Finally, it examines the relationship between climate change and human rights law, focusing on the role that human rights law can play in the development of the current climate change adaptation and mitigation frameworks.


Author(s):  
Michael Blake

This chapter introduces the book’s positive account of the right to exclude. It grounds it in the limited and presumptive right to be free from being charged with the defense of another’s basic rights—when those rights are adequately protected in her country of origin. The chapter provides an argument for this jurisdictional ground, while showing that it is consonant with both the structure of international human rights law and consistent with the nature of states as political entities. This ground, moreover, is shown to be incapable of defending the sorts of exclusion found in political practice—which opens up the possibility of using that ground to criticize existing practices. The chapter ends by considering three forms of objection—the objections from expulsion, from reproduction, and from liberty—and shows how the jurisdictional method defended can overcome these concerns.


Author(s):  
Affolder Natasha

This chapter assesses international environmental law in the courts of North America. In particular, it explores the minimal engagement of US, Canadian, and Mexican courts with international environmental law. Environmental law cases in Canada, Mexico, and the United States are not immune to international law and international norms. However, international environmental lawyers may be forced to look to some unlikely and unusual places to find international environmental law's normative influence. Environmental law cases in North America seem poised to engage most significantly with international law not in the ‘bright lights’ but rather on the side-lines, where environmental law norms interface with climate law, private international law, Indigenous law, and human rights law.


Author(s):  
Klabbers Jan

This chapter highlights the accountability of international organizations in refugee and migration law. It sets out the general responsibility regime as it applies to international organizations with special reference to refugee protection. Several international organizations are pertinent: most prominently UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but also the EU through Frontex, its European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Refugee protection also involves several different settings, from the running of refugee camps and the guarding of borders to the handling of individual asylum applications. In general, the chapter demonstrates that responsibility is highly elusive.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-218
Author(s):  
Marie-Catherine Petersmann

This contribution aims to identify the numerous conflicts that arise between environmental protection regulations and specific human rights. By focusing on the case law of regional human rights mechanisms, it highlights the “positive” and the “negative” integration of international environmental law (IEL) within the human rights law (HRL) regime. It argues that these supposedly separate bodies of law are in reality intertwined. The case law analysis of the negative integration of IEL within the HRL regime teaches us that HRL adjudicators have done more than neutrally measure conformity of environmental protection regulations with the HRL regime. While some cases add specific procedural requirements to these environmental protection regulations – Xàkmok Kàsek case – others establish a hierarchy between IEL and HRL – Fredin and Turgut cases – and yet others engage in defining and arguably even producing environmental rights – Herrick and Chapman cases. This contribution provides specific insights into how regional human rights adjudicators resolve conflicts and what consequences result from the judicial techniques in terms of both the content of the respective legal regimes and their hierarchical relationship. It argues that both content and implementation of IEL cannot be understood without integrating HRL adjudicators into the analytical framework.


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