Abstract
At the outset of 2025, the United States was greeted with a series of unprecedented wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles, causing immense damage to property and loss of lives, while thousands were forced to evacuate their homes. This came just months after flooding from Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina and surrounding States, causing at least 130 deaths and rendering many residences uninhabitable. Despite this deepening crisis, the identification and protection of the rights of climate refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (“IDPs”) remains a burgeoning topic internationally, and even more so in the domestic context of the United States. As described in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, IDPs notably have the right to be free from discrimination, to be effectively resettled or compensated, and to have a say in the management of this resettlement/compensation. While the United States has a long-standing framework for addressing displacement caused by natural disasters, this framework has proven insufficient in addressing these modern needs and rights of IDPs. However, even the Guiding Principles lack adequate protections for slow-onset IDPs, who are not displaced by natural disaster, but rather by the gradual effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise. By implementing a framework which adequately addresses the needs of both acute- and slow-onset IDPs, the United States would be able to better achieve the standard of IDP rights set out by the Guiding Principles, get ahead of the effects of climate change rather than merely react to the disasters that ensue, and set an example to the rest of the world in protecting their own climate-displaced persons.
Recommended Citation
Bashar Zaheer,
United States Internal Displacement Policy in the Era of Climate Change,
70
St. Louis U. L.J.
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol70/iss2/10