For the first time: Climate refugees will testify in Washington

Climate & environment 

For the first time: Climate refugees will testify in Washington
Will speak about the changes before the commission

Christina Nordh

Updated 08.45 | Published 07.54

Planeta residents wade through flooded streets after Honduras was hit by Hurricane Eta in 2020. Eta claimed dozens of lives in landslides and floods from Guatemala to Panama. Photo: Delmer Martinez/AP

They were forced to move due to climate change.

On Thursday, they testify - as the first climate refugees ever.

Community residents under direct threat from rising sea levels, rivers and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday. It is about how the climate disaster has forced people to flee, writes The Guardian.

More fleeing extreme weather

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR, will hear testimony from people on the front lines of the climate crisis in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia during a hearing requested by human rights groups in Latin America, the United States and the Caribbean.

A growing number of immigrants and refugees are seeking refuge in the United States and other countries to seek refuge from severe storms, extreme heat and drought. Also avoid slower climate disasters such as ocean acidification, coastal erosion and the spread of deserts.

The sea swallows the fishing village

One of the cases concerns Higinio Alberto Ramirez from Honduras.  Last year, he suffered life-threatening injuries when a fire destroyed a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. 43 migrants from Latin America died.

Ramirez, who is from a small fishing village on the verge of being swallowed up by rising sea levels, was trying to get to the United States to pay off his family's debts after tidal waves destroyed the shrimp factory where his father worked.

- The case of the Ramirez family is a tragic reminder that forced migration is not about the future. Sea levels have been rising due to climate change for decades. States and humanitarian efforts must catch up and make sure there is protection for them, Gretchen Kuhner, head of the Mexico-based Institute for Women in Migration (Imumi), which is one of the groups that requested the hearing, told the newspap