20 April 2026

States in the Americas have progressively recognized that people displaced in the context of climate change and disasters need protection, and many have developed practices to provide it. What they have been slower to embrace is that doing so is not just a matter of discretion, but a legal obligation. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ landmark 2025 Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights marks the most significant step yet in that direction.

This article traces the regional developments that led to the Advisory Opinion; reflects on its significance as a landmark judicial pronouncement on climate-related human mobility and the legal force it gives to the practices identified in the Nansen Initiative’s Protection Agenda a decade ago; considers the significant step the court took on the specific question of international protection and where it could have gone further; and examines what the Advisory Opinion means for States, practitioners and advocates working to protect people displaced in the context of climate change and disasters in the Americas.

From recognition to obligation

The past decade has seen significant developments in how States in the Americas have addressed climate- and disaster-related displacement – across political, institutional and legal spheres. Two political milestones stand out. Building on the decennial commemorations of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, the 2014 Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action was the first major regional commitment to recognize cross-border displacement in the context of climate change and disasters as a protection challenge. Notably, it called for a comprehensive study on the issue so that governments could design legal and policy solutions, from proactive disaster preparedness to humanitarian visas.

The 2024–2034 Chile Declaration and Plan of Action, adopted by 22 States across Latin America and the Caribbean, represents the most comprehensive regional commitment to date on climate- and disaster-related displacement. Its decade-long framework includes meaningful provisions on protection for people displaced across borders, including access to asylum procedures and the prohibition on return to places where their lives or freedom would be at risk. Yet, reflecting the political sensitivities of a consensus document, it does not explicitly recognize that States are required to protect people displaced in these situations under existing international and regional refugee and human rights frameworks. Instead, it treats UNHCR’s 2020 legal considerations on how those frameworks apply to international protection claims made in the context of climate change and disasters as something States ‘could take into account on a voluntary basis’.

In contrast to the political process of Cartagena, it is within the inter-American human rights system that the question of legal obligation has been most directly confronted. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ 2024 Resolution on Human Mobility in the context of Climate Change provided comprehensive, structured guidance on States’ obligations across the full spectrum of climate-related human mobility grounded in inter-American human rights standards.

The Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion goes still further. The sweeping opinion affirms that climate change constitutes an emergency, recognizes nature as a rights holder, and articulates a new human right to a healthy climate. It also establishes an enhanced due diligence standard, requiring States to act with heightened care and urgency to prevent climate harm and protect people from its impacts. Within that framework, the court addresses the full spectrum of climate-related human mobility as a human rights concern.

The Protection Agenda in the court’s reasoning

The court refers to the Protection Agenda several times when outlining States’ obligations regarding climate-related displacement and human mobility. In doing so, it gives legal force to much of what the Protection Agenda identified as effective practices that States should voluntarily adopt. The alignment is clear across the Protection Agenda’s three priority areas.

The Protection Agenda’s first priority area concerns data and knowledge on cross-border disaster displacement. The court addresses this as a legal duty, requiring States to establish mechanisms to produce, collect and disseminate information on climate risks and human mobility, which must inform all public policies.

The court aligns with the Protection Agenda’s second priority area on protection and solutions for displaced people by requiring States to establish effective legal and administrative frameworks guaranteeing their protection, including humanitarian visas, temporary residence permits and refugee or similar statuses with safeguards against return to places where people’s lives, safety, or freedom would be at risk. Crucially, the court emphasizes that providing these temporary programs must not prejudice the adoption of long-term, coordinated solutions.

Beyond domestic frameworks, the court requires States to cooperate bilaterally and regionally to harmonize these approaches and to strengthen mechanisms to ensure that any return or readmission of displaced persons is carried out in safety, dignity and with full respect for human rights. It also affirms that managing cross-border displacement safely and in an orderly manner is a shared responsibility of the international community. Meeting that responsibility requires adequate international funding mechanisms, guided by principles of equity, solidarity and common but differentiated responsibilities, to support the developing countries most exposed to climate impacts in addressing climate-related human mobility.

Finally, the court addresses the necessity to integrate human mobility considerations into domestic disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies – the third priority of the Protection Agenda. The court requires States to define and regularly update national adaptation plans and address disaster risk prevention, as well as the structural causes of vulnerability that lead to displacement. It further requires States to adopt measures, consistent with the enhanced due diligence standard, to prevent forced displacement resulting directly or indirectly from climate change.

Where involuntary displacement is unavoidable, States should develop frameworks to address the needs of affected populations. The court affirms that planned relocations must occur only in exceptional and unavoidable circumstances to preserve life, integrity and health; must be governed by an adequate legal framework; and must guarantee access to land of equivalent or better quality, adequate housing and access to essential services.

A significant step forward but a missed opportunity

On the question of international protection, the Advisory Opinion takes a vital step forward. It affirms that people displaced across borders in the context of climate change may be entitled to international protection, including refugee status. It further confirms that States’ non-refoulement obligations under human rights law apply in this context, citing the UN Human Rights Committee’s decision in Teitiota v New Zealand, which found that States must not remove individuals to places where the effects of climate change may expose them to violations of their rights to life and to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The International Court of Justice, in its own 2025 Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, affirmed the same principle.

Yet, despite the breadth of the Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion, the court did not go as far as it could have. Having already acknowledged the applicability of international protection, it could have elaborated how existing frameworks apply in practice. But it did not explain how instruments such as the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the Cartagena Declaration or the inter-American system’s jurisprudence on non-refoulement, specifically apply to displacement in the context of climate change or disasters.

The absence of any reference to the Cartagena Declaration is worth examining. In its own prior jurisprudence, the court read the Declaration’s expanded refugee definition (which covers people whose life, safety or liberty is threatened by massive violations of human rights or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order) into the right to seek and receive asylum under the American Convention on Human Rights. Two dozen briefs submitted to the court urged it to make that connection explicit in the climate displacement context – which the Inter-American Commission’s 2024 Resolution had in fact already done. Given that climate and disaster events can generate exactly the circumstances the Cartagena definition was designed to address, this was a step the court was well placed to take.

The court’s lack of specific guidance on the applicability of international protection in this context leaves work to be done, but the foundation has never been stronger. The court was remarkably clear regarding the scope and heightened duty of care States must exercise in responding to the climate emergency, including climate- and disaster-related human mobility. When read alongside the inter-American system’s robust standards on international protection, a clear path forward emerges.

The path ahead

The Advisory Opinion marks a turning point, but what follows depends on what States, civil society and affected communities do with it. States in the Americas now have a clear legal obligation to develop the frameworks, protections and cooperation mechanisms the court has identified, spanning data collection, adaptation planning, humanitarian protection and regional cooperation. The Chile Declaration and Plan of Action, which should now be interpreted in light of the court’s reinforced due diligence standard, provides a concrete regional framework for the next decade, as well as opportunities to engage and press States to close the gap between legal obligations, political commitments and practice.

On the issue of international protection, the work will be to ensure adjudicators apply existing refugee and human rights frameworks to the claims of people displaced by the adverse effects of climate change and disasters, and that policymakers strengthen the legal and institutional conditions to support them in doing so. That will require the sustained advocacy of people with lived experience, practitioners and civil society across the Americas, who must hold States to the heightened standard of care the court calls for in responding to the climate emergency.

Tools to support that work have been developed over recent years. Among them, the 2025 International Protection for People Displaced across Borders in the context of Climate Change and Disasters: A Practical Toolkit provides detailed guidance on how those frameworks apply, including the Cartagena Declaration and inter-American human rights law. The Advisory Opinion strengthens the legal foundation for its core premise, namely, that climate impacts can trigger States’ international protection obligations, and that States must respond accordingly.

While fulfilling these obligations will face political headwinds, unprepared institutions and hesitant decision-makers, the Advisory Opinion makes one thing unmistakably clear: protecting people affected by the climate emergency, including those who are displaced, is not a matter of discretion but legal obligation.

Felipe Navarro is the Associate Director of Policy & Advocacy at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.