Environmental asylum: a new phenomenon in international law

One of the challenging issues in the field of modern international law is the emergence of a new type of refugees that has been forced to leave their country for reasons of environmental risk and climate change consequences. This population shift is one of the most prominent signs of a lack of security that is both a cause and a consequence of that and one of the most significant human hazards. The international asylum system today needs serious attention to prevent and protect environmental refugees affected by the increasing speed of environmental degradation and climate change. The purpose of this research, using a descriptive method of documentary analysis, is to provide a definition of environmental refugees to identify them in international law due to seek a legal framework in international documents and procedures to support them. The findings indicate that no explicit definition of this category of refugees is found in the international documents and procedures, but can be implicitly identified from regional documents as well as legal doctrines. The rights that environmental refugees can provide in international documents and procedures are embodied in both the asylum legal system and the international human rights system. Since it is not always possible to support individuals by their governments, the effectiveness of a priori and aesthetic approaches to protecting environmental refugees also requires acceptance of shared responsibility by different countries based on human dignity and fundamental human rights.