The Climate Mobility Case Database: a new movement to advance the rights of climate-displaced communities

Climate change, disasters and corporate driven-environmental harms are forcing communities to move – both within countries and across borders.

Displacement linked to the impacts of climate change is no longer a speculative concern – it is a legal, social, and humanitarian reality that is increasingly shaping patterns of mobility – and testing the adequacy of existing legal frameworks in protecting those affected. For legal practitioners and advocates working in immigration, asylum, or human rights, this evolving landscape presents both challenges and opportunities.

In response to this emerging reality and a demand from global civil society, a new resource has launched: the Climate Mobility Case (CMC) Database, facilitated and developed by the Global Strategic Litigation Council (GSLC), Earth Refuge, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute on Human Rights, and with support from the pro bono teams at DLA Piper and Eversheds Sutherland. 

The database brings together summaries of legal decisions concerning human mobility – both within states and across borders – which feature arguments concerning or referencing climate or environmental factors. Each case summary draws upon the lessons learned from each case to bolster future litigation in this sphere. 

Why this database matters

The database is more than just a repository – it is a cornerstone for collective action. The idea first stemmed from a series of regional consultations co-hosted by the Global Strategic Litigation Council, which brought together refugee and migrant leaders, lawyers, academics, and advocates to identify the most pressing legal gaps facing displaced communities and how we can address them. Climate-related (im)mobility emerged as a clear global priority, alongside a call for shared legal tools to help effectively respond to what is a rapidly evolving crisis.

Until recently, practitioners engaging with climate mobility issues had limited access to systematically organised legal materials. Much of the existing jurisprudence was fragmented, scattered across jurisdictions, or buried in UN submissions, domestic court rulings, and soft law instruments. The Climate Mobility Case Database changes that.

Searchable and thematically organised, it offers a practical tool to support strategic litigation, legal reform, protection-oriented policy work and capacity-building. Crucially, the database will serve communities directly affected by providing a platform for their voices to be amplified. On the database landing page, we will host blogs authored by community leaders and affected individuals, ensuring that the database centers the people who are most affected.

The timing is critical. Increasingly, clients are presenting with narratives that involve some form of environmental harm or disaster experience. Legal aid providers, immigration lawyers, and civil society actors are beginning to explore how those experiences interact with legal protection needs, particularly where states are unwilling or unable to safeguard rights in the face of climate-linked threats.

At the Global Strategic Litigation Council, we connect many of these actors with a membership of almost 600 members lawyers, advocates, NGOs and community leaders across the world. We believe in the power of people and the law to advance the rights of displaced people through strategic litigation and advocacy. With our unique reach and expertise, the database is a strategic compass for our future action and that of our global coalition. 

Equipped with the learning from previous cases across the world, the database will enhance efforts to build a growing body of precedent that secures and advances the rights of climate-displaced people through strategic litigation and advocacy. It will help us coordinate litigation across our networks, surface replicable legal arguments, and highlight underused legal pathways. 

The database will help to identify the most effective legal arguments and strategic avenues as we support advocates and organizations with key litigation in this emerging area of law. It is already proving instrumental in our work in Brazil, where we are supporting a major case in partnership with community leaders on the ground, advocating for 60,000 people displaced by environmental degradation linked to extractive mining. 

We are also rolling out training to equip global civil society to use and contribute to the database on both internal and cross-border displacement cases. This is part of our commitment to a sustainable, scalable approach, one that builds toward a more just future for climate-displaced communities worldwide.

Internal displacement: legal strategies and emerging principles

The database includes a growing set of internal displacement cases that illustrate how courts are responding to the complex interplay between climate or environmental harm, displacement, and rights protection. One standout example is the Colombian Constitutional Court [2024] Sentencia T-123 ruling, in which the court concluded that victims of internal forced displacement faced a constitutional protection deficit within the Colombian legal framework, noting that current regulations do not provide clear guidelines for relocation processes or durable solutions for those displaced by environmental degradation or slow-onset phenomena. The court urged Congress to draft comprehensive legislation to address displacement and environmental degradation.

Such cases demonstrate the striking way in which courts are creatively using constitutional and human rights frameworks to bridge the gap between environmental harm and social protection. While domestic in scope, the reasoning has resonance for lawyers elsewhere: it suggests that arguments grounded in dignity, participation, and cultural integrity can be effective tools when conventional displacement categories fall short.

Elsewhere, countries such as Kenya and Ecuador are reckoning with state obligations towards populations displaced by floods, typhoons, or droughts, often relying on national disaster management laws or rights to life and housing. While the legal architecture varies, the underlying questions are often the same: when do failures of prevention, adaptation, or response amount to violations of legal rights?

Cross-border movement: building legal arguments across jurisdictions

For those working in international protection, the database’s collection of cross-border cases is particularly valuable. It includes both well-known decisions and lesser-cited cases that may offer creative entry points for advocacy.

Among the most cited is the Teitiota v New Zealand decision by the UN Human Rights Committee, which examined whether returning an individual to Kiribati – a low-lying island nation facing serious climate impacts – would breach the right to life under the ICCPR. The Committee found no violation in that case, but it did open the door to future claims by recognising that environmental degradation could, in principle, give rise to non-refoulement obligations.

Beyond Teitiota, the database includes examples of humanitarian or residency visas being granted in response to environmental degradation or disaster-linked displacement. Sweden, for instance, issued humanitarian protection to a Haitian young woman whose home was destroyed by the 2010 earthquake. The Swedish Migration Agency refused her application for international protection. The Swedish Migration Court overturned the decision, finding that the applicant was eligible for subsidiary protection owing to the specific risk she faced as a young women without a family support network who was at high risk of sexual assault in the context of post-earthquake Haiti. 

While not framed explicitly as “climate migration”, these practices show how administrative discretion and human rights principles can be used to expand protection in the absence of formal refugee recognition.

Other countries featured in the database include:

• Italy, where there have been overlaps between human trafficking and vulnerability to the risks presented by climate-related disasters. 
• South Africa, where courts have been asked to weigh in on disaster-related cross-border movement in a regional context.
• France, Germany, and Switzerland, where limited jurisprudence is emerging on climate-linked immigration cases.
• Australia, which remains a focal point due its proximity to Pacific Island states.

In most jurisdictions, these cases sit at the margins of refugee or immigration law, often dealt with through complementary protection, humanitarian visas, or discretionary relief. Collectively, however, they are starting to establish a baseline of expectations that states cannot turn a blind eye to the displacement risks posed by climate and environmental crises.

A collaborative tool for future legal challenges

One of the strengths of the CMC database is that it is not static. 

It has been designed as a living tool; one that practitioners can engage with, contribute to, and help to shape. Its filters and categories make it easy to find cases by legal issue, jurisdiction, or displacement type. Case summaries are structured to highlight the core legal questions and reasoning, offering quick insight into how particular arguments have been framed and received.

Crucially the database has been founded as a public resource for all those working at the frontlines of legal advice and representation. Together, as a connected global community, we believe we can advance the rights of climate-displaced communities, as well as those at-risk. As practitioners, you can contribute and get involved in numerous ways:

• There is an open invitation for practitioners to submit new cases and propose feedback.
• We also welcome proposals for short blogs analysing pending developments in your cases or jurisdictions, and amplifying the voices of affected communities.
• You can request or attend a training on the database. We have already run a launch training series across Africa, Europe Asia-Pacific and Latin America which you can watch here. 
• As the database evolves, we will regularly publish thematic insights and deliver briefings that translate data into actionable strategies. Sign up to the Council here and join our Europe regional network to receive all the latest updates and connect with our European members to exchange knowledge and coordinate your efforts.
• As a member of the Council, you will also be able to request expert technical assistance on your climate displacement litigation. Submit your request for support here.

Our goal is to ensure the database not only reflects the state of the law but actively shapes it, empowering practitioners to drive rights-based, precedent-setting action across jurisdictions and contexts.

Final thoughts

As climate impacts deepen and legal protection gaps become harder to ignore, we need more than academic analysis or high-level declarations. We need practical tools that help legal professionals navigate this evolving terrain with clarity and purpose. The database is one such tool, and its value will grow as more people use and contribute to it.

For those already advising clients whose stories intersect with climate or environmental harms or disaster displacement, this resource offers a new starting point. For those not yet doing so, it is a reminder that these cases are not on the horizon — they are already here and the time for action is now. 

This article was co-written by Yumna Kamel, the co-founder and Executive Director of Earth Refuge, a legal think tank dedicated to climate displacement.