The Security Council’s series of resolutions on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) have not been adopted in a vacuum but operate within the framework of changing international law and institutional activity. In some cases, this is made explicit, as where the Council calls for respect for existing international legal obligations,1 including those emanating from international humanitarian law (IHL), human rights law, especially the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), refugee law, and the law relating to remedies and trading in small arms.

Climate change will fundamentally affect the lives of millions of people who may be forced to leave their villages and cities to seek refuge in other areas over the course of this century. Even though most climate migrants will move within their own country,1 many might also migrate across international borders. So far, several initiatives have been put in place to strengthen soft law mechanisms to protect those displaced due to natural disasters and climate change, such as the ‘Nansen Initiative on cross-border displacement in the context of disasters and the effects of climate change’

The Pacific Small Island Developing States are low-lying and located near the equator, where changes in mean temperature, rainfall, and hazards such as floods and storms will be most severe. As developing countries, their populations are often classed as vulnerable with their ability to adapt constrained. This chapter identifies current mobility flows in Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Marshall Islands to show that movements are largely from outer islands towards urban centres which can create new risks in overcrowded, exposed towns, and cities. While flows of people into urban areas are increasing, flows out are less dynamic. People may want to move, but their agency may be limited.

The chapter then considers existing and potential frameworks and innovative ways to facilitate more adaptive and dignified forms of migration. It outlines opportunities for addressing climate-related mobility for the Pacific Small Island Developing States at the global, regional, and national level. It considers global frameworks such as the UNFCCC and then analyses the constraints to regional agreements which would enable ‘Migration with Dignity’. The chapter concludes that new efforts at all levels are essential to boost the agency of Islanders to be able to decide whether to move, and under what circumstances.

In the past decade, United Nations multilateral frameworks dedicated to finding solutions to the defining issues of our times have increasingly included issues of migration in the context of climate change. The topic is now widely discussed in forums dedicated to climate change, migration governance, sustainable development, and disaster risk reduction.1 Since the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the adoption of the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015, there has been a clear increase in states’ political interest in climate change and migration issues, leading to extensive policy discussions on what states can do to anticipate and manage this specific type of movement.

In Chapter 3, I explained that international law has no definition of ‘peace’. The same is true of ‘security’, a concept that is essentially left to other disciplines such as international relations, security and conflict studies. International relations scholars examine the causes and consequences of conflict with feminists turning the lens to the forms of insecurity experienced by women in conflict because they are women.1 International law has sought to regulate conflict, restricting both legal recourse to war (the jus ad bellum) and the means and methods through which war may be waged (the jus in bello, international humanitarian law (IHL)). These international legal regimes have been scrutinised by feminist scholars to reveal the discipline’s biases and blind spots and how they uphold the structures of power.2 This chapter considers women and security within the framework of international law.

Since 2015, the international community has made significant strides in recognising and addressing disaster displacement in the context of climate change as an important humanitarian and development challenge.1 Policy instruments, stakeholder partnerships, and funding opportunities have been developed in various areas of policymaking related to climate change action, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and human mobility. To date, however, coordination and cross-fertilisation between these policy and action frameworks remain limited. This raises important questions about the governance of disaster displacement: how can the international community integrate these policies and actions and weave a ‘coherent web’ to better protect disaster-displaced persons globally?

Lack of progress in climate change negotiations, accompanied with an overall sense of despair, has led civil society organisations to attempt different strategies in order to mobilise public opinion and push states towards more ambitious climate action. One notably strategy has been the use of national and international courts, with the hope that these will fill in the regulatory gap and force states into action. Many of these claims are relevant for climate refugees, whether explicitly (e.g. by addressing displacement) or indirectly (e.g. by addressing related questions such causality). While this trend is very much still ongoing, enough decisions have been made to allow for an interim assessment of this strategy. This chapter claims that while the appeal to courts have led to some progress, one must consider also the pitfalls inherent in this strategy.

When delegations packed up and left COP21 in Paris, in December 2015, the conference had decided to establish a task force to ‘develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change’.1 The Task Force on Displacement (TFD) was in some respects a disappointment given the lack of substantial commitments to enhanced protection standards from the international community. On the other hand, it was regarded as a success by several involved actors given that displacement related to climate change was at all included in the pivotal Paris Agreement.

If IOs comply with their international legal obligation to provide an appropriate mode of dispute resolution to private persons they impact, there will be little need for national courts to take jurisdiction in claims against IOs. An appropriate DRM must deliver justice independently, impartially and fairly. What precisely these key component fair trial guarantees require was set out in Chapter 2. That discussion can prove of much benefit to IOs wishing to establish fair trial compliant internal justice systems, as well as to all those who may be required to assess the quality of justice delivered at an institutional DRM. In the end, whether a dispute is resolved at an institutional DRM, through an arbitral process or through another mode of dispute resolution, justice must be delivered consistently with the right to a fair trial as developed in IHRL. This book does not state a preference for what type of DRM IOs should establish.

This chapter focuses on the city of Harish, a project that various governments have tried to develop over the last forty years. The first attempts included a kibbutz, a Community Settlement and, later, a Suburban Settlement. All were unsuccessful, mainly due to the site’s peripheral location and proximity to the West Bank and other Arab towns. By 2010, the huge demand for new dwelling units, the construction of the Trans-Israel Highway and the recently erected West Bank Separation Barrier all contributed to turning Harish into an attractive piece of real estate. This enabled the Israeli government to designate it as a city with a target population of 60,000. Focusing on the case of Harish, this chapter illustrates the financialization of the national settlement project, explaining how the state apparatus was used to create a real-estate market in a given area to supply the dwelling units that were needed while expanding the national territorial project. Analyzing the urban layout and the housing units in Harish, as well as the everyday life of the families in it, this chapter explains how this future city embodies the privatization of the national settlement project.

This chapter explores the relationship between climate change, displacement, and the right to mental health. It builds on a significant body of research that has explored the history of environment-induced migration,1 the influence of climate change on migration patterns,2 and projections about future climate change-induced migration.3 Amongst other things, this research establishes that migration in the context of climate change is ‘a complex, multicausal phenomenon’, and the impacts of climate change often contribute to a ‘cluster of causes that lead to migration’.

This chapter highlights three areas where local communities across the Asia-Pacific region – supported by National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (National Societies) – are already active in addressing climate- and disaster-related displacements. These areas include community engagement in developing legal and policy frameworks; community-led vulnerability, risk, and capacity assessments; and community participation in innovative anticipatory humanitarian approaches to addressing displacement. This chapter highlights both best practices associated with these examples and some of the challenges that these examples face in successful implementation. It proposes that these examples warrant further attention, support, and engagement, both as stand-alone practices and as part of a broader commitment and support for community participation and leadership in addressing climate- and disaster-related displacement.

The final chapter discusses the main findings of the previous chapters. It draws a continuous line between the different phenomena presented in the book and explains how they constitute a gradual process of privatization. It summarizes the different national and private interests in the development of the area along the Trans-Israel Highway and explains how this influence was manifested in the local built environment and in residents’ everyday lives. Using the case studies presented in the book, the chapter concludes by presenting a new theoretical framework that explains the relations between the state, the market. and the individual, and how these shape the built environment and the everyday lives of those living in it.