The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee (HRC) ruled January 21 that “countries cannot deport people who have sought asylum due to climate-related threats.”
The ruling came in a case brought in 2015 by a Ioane Teitota, who sought asylum in New Zealand as a “climate refugee.”
The HRC didn’t rule that New Zealand’s refusal to admit Teitota as a refugee violated his “right to life,” but it did rule that “people seeking asylum are not required to prove that they would face immediate harm, if deported back to their home countries … because climate-related events can occur both suddenly—such as intense storms or flooding—or over time through slow-onset processes such as sea level rise and land degradation, either situation could spur people to seek safety elsewhere.”
At least one news-and-opinion website, Jim Hoft’s Gateway Pundit, warned that because of the ruling “US Must Open Its Borders to All Central Americans.”
But that is false. The UN committee’s ruling is not binding on the United States, according to international child rights attorney Elizabeth Yore, who has long experience dealing with international law and the United Nations.
Asked whether the ruling bound the United States, she replied by email:
It has no import whatsoever on US policy. As a sovereign country, the UN has no control or say so over our borders.
What is a “climate refugee,” anyway? It is a mere fiction, a manufactured notion of the UN and its Greta Thunberg acolytes. The language of obfuscation must be challenged and deconstructed. Not unlike the phantasmagoric “sustainable development,” which sounds lofty but obscures an anti-life and totalitarian agenda.
The UN globalist elites will not dictate our border policy.
Ironically, the ruling comes on a case brought by someone claiming that sea-level rise driven by manmade global warming threatened his homeland, the island nation of Kiribati. But tide gauges show that sea level at Kiribati is rising at only about 0.96 mm/year.
Since Kiribati’s highest point is 13 meters above sea level, that means it will take 13,000 years at that rate to be inundated. The average elevation of its 32 atolls and one raised coral island is 2 meters (slightly over 6.5 feet). At 0.96 mm/year, sea level will rise that much in just over 2,083 years.
In the 5 years since Teitota made his claim, sea level has risen only about 4.8 mm (slightly less than a fifth of an inch).
Hard to see how that makes him a climate refugee.
Featured image: Kiribati (Christmas Island), by NASA Earth Observatory.
louis wachsmuth says
Hey Cornwall, where are your field researchers located? Read today’s post from National Geographic: “That’s why National Geographic and Rolex have partnered to support trailblazing scientific research, expeditions, and solutions to increase our understanding of the threats facing the planet’s life support systems and drive action to address them.The first phase of this Perpetual Planet partnership focuses on mountain systems and the role they play in providing water resources to nearly 2 billion people. Learn more about these water towers and our groundbreaking expedition to Mt. Everest (known locally as Sagarmatha or Chomolungma) below. Scientists from around the world have collaborated on new research showing that glacier-based mountain water systems around the world are at risk, in many cases critically, due to growing environmental pressures. By identifying the most relied upon, and most vulnerable, of these water towers, this research aims to help prioritize the protection of these critical systems…” These darn liberal scientists keep lying and producing “fake news”?