15 May 2009 SUBMISSION CLIMATE CHANGE AND STATELESSNESS: AN OVERVIEW1 submitted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) supported by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) to the 6th session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA 6) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1 to 12 June 2009, Bonn, Germany This note relates to the implementation of paragraph 1(c) of the Bali Action Plan and requests UNFCCC negotiators to ensure recognition in the follow-up Protocol of the need for early action to prevent statelessness as outlined below, and to permit funding for adaptation to be made available for such early actions. ‘Sinking island states’ present one of the most dramatic scenarios of the impact of climate change. The entire populations of low-lying States such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands may in future be obliged to leave their own country as a result of climate change. Moreover, the existence of their State as such may be threatened. Entire populations of affected states could thus become stateless. Article 1 of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons defines a stateless person as “a person who is not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law”. Should a state cease to exist, citizenship of that state would cease, as there would no longer be a state of which a person could be a national.1 The question is then the extent to which climate change could affect statehood. Although there is no internationally agreed definition of what constitutes a State, there is agreement in the existing doctrine that there must be territory inhabited by a permanent population under the control of an effective government. Additionally, independence has been cited by publicists as a central criterion of statehood. The criteria are not absolute and are, moreover, applied less strictly once a State is established. The temporary exile of a government even for an extended period would thus not necessarily lead to extinction of the State. There is no precedent for loss of the entire territory or the exile of the entire population; presumably statehood would similarly not cease if such loss or exile were temporary. The implication, however, is that where such a situation would be permanent, statehood could be questioned.2 This note is a summary overview of a more extensive note on climate change and statelessness prepared by UNHCR pursuant to its mandate to prevent and reduce statelessness and to protect stateless persons. More detailed information may be obtained by contacting UNHCR through park@unhcr.org 1 1