Legal Approaches for Protection of Environmentally Internally Displaced Persons in Latin American
摘要
Environmentally Displaced Persons (EDPs), internal or cross-border, are not usually recognised as a particular category of migrant or displaced person within international, regional, or national regimes. There is no consensual terminology or definition adopted in hard law instruments to recognise them, particularly because of the multidimensionality of the causes of displacement and the supposed difficulty of directly linking climate change and migration. Their recognition and protection varies, particularly in some Latin American and Caribbean States. Regarding Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) by environmental change, be they caused by climate change or not, the United Nations System has only soft law instruments to address their existence and need for protection. Regionally, the Organisation of American States also has some recommendations for States, differently from the African regional level, in which the 2009 Kampala Convention formally protects them on a hard law basis. Hence, this chapter discusses international, regional, and state recognition and protection of EDPs in Latin American and the Caribbean Basin regions through soft and hard law instruments upon legal theory and legal practice through compared legal approaches that aim to protect their human rights.