Displaced by environmental disasters: evaluating the Kampala Convention's (in)effectiveness ten years after it came into force.

Abstract

The scientific evidence accumulated by the IPCC shows that climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Forced displacement of populations, mostly internal and numbering in the millions, is one of the dramatic consequences. To prevent it and provide comprehensive protection to the victims (Internally Displaced Persons), the African Union adopted, in 2009, its Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention). Ten years after the entry into force of this regional treaty (2012), this paper aims to take stock of the progress made in its implementation and, in particular, to assess its effectiveness in protecting people displaced by environmental disasters associated with climate change. To this end, it endeavours to identify the existing and ongoing normative, political, and institutional processes in the continent, particularly in Angola, regarding the convention’s implementation, seeking to explore the extent to which such processes provide adequate protection to people environmentally displaced. It concludes that there has been considerable progress in the domestication and implementation of the Kampala Convention. However, attention to internal displacement caused by conflict and violence appears predominant. There is little attention to displacement driven by environmental disasters. There is even a certain reluctance to admit as victims for protection and assistance those populations whose displacement derives from slow-onset climatic events. Moreover, the Angolan case highlights the pervasive trend to reduce the Kampala Convention to the role of a mere stone guest or wet paper.