This paper highlights the particular challenges of Puerto Ricans facing displacement in the context of climate change. Unlike Small Island Developing States and other climate-vulnerable nations, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is not well-positioned to benefit from UNFCCC initiatives to build resilience and address climate-related challenges due its status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. It is therefore imperative that Puerto Rican authorities and civil society, the US government and international organizations collaborate to develop measures and mechanisms to safeguard the rights of Puerto Ricans displaced on the island of Puerto Rico and to the US mainland.

Civilians residing in armed conflict situations face several different types of displacement, including strategic methods utilized by armed groups to force movement. The ways in which civilians can be forcibly displaced during armed conflict can have an impact on IDP policy and state responses. The authors of this piece analyze the relationship between how and why civilians are displaced by armed groups and steps, or at times lack thereof, taken by states to implement IDP policy. Additionally, the article discusses the research being conducted to better understand the factors impacting states’ responses to IDPs in conflict zones across the globe.

This short article looks at two similar and overlapping practices addressing the needs of people displaced or facing displacement - planned relocations and durable solutions. Though generally taken up by two distinct practitioner and scholarly communities, they address a similar challenge: how to help people who can no longer live in their place of origin find lasting, comprehensive solutions. This piece looks at what planned relocation and durable solutions share in common, and what each practice can learn from the other. It calls for cross-pollination of approaches and for collaboration to address common gaps in knowledge and practice.

Sustainable climate adaptation outcomes for people and places require policies that facilitate the ability to move and the resilience to stay. However, research into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) has uncovered significant gaps in how human (im)mobility — which includes displacement, migration, planned relocation, and immobility — is addressed. This short piece looks at how and why human (im)mobility is insufficiently mainstreamed into national climate adaptation planning and identifies opportunities to close these gaps.

The forthcoming Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice will provide a weighty, rigorous and contemporary legal analysis of States’ legal obligations with respect to climate change and human rights. This opinion piece describes ways in which the court’s response to the request for an Advisory Opinion, led by Vanuatu, might influence protection for people at risk of displacement in the context of climate change. However, as the author notes, the extent to which the ICJ considers displacement may depend in part on State submissions to the ICJ, due by 22 March 2024.

This short piece describes how disbelief in climate change, shaped by political ideology and fossil fuel interests, has shifted environmental adaptation strategies away from relocation, effectively keeping people exposed to extreme weather events in Coastal Louisiana, USA, 'in their place'. This case study shows Schewel's notion of 'acquiescent immobility' in an interesting light, raising questions around what 'choice' is when anthropogenic climate change goes unacknowledged and planned relocation and other potentially viable adaptation pathways are discouraged.

Conflict-induced displacement (CID) has been the main challenge in Ethiopia in recent periods. This policy brief attempts to explore the pattern of conflict-induced displacements in Ethiopia with their causes, consequences, and management. There is a large influx of conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. By the end of 2022, there were a total of 4.56 million IDPs in Ethiopia, out of which 3.85 million (84%) were displaced by conflicts. The main causes for conflict-induced displacements are principally structural and proximate including the ubiquity of violent conflicts across the country. The problem of CID has a myriad of consequences up on displaced peoples, the host community and the government at large. This being the case, the management of conflict-induced displacements in Ethiopia emphasizes controlling the violence, inter-governmental consultations, and provision of emergency support to IDPs. However, the structural causes, as well as the multifaceted effects of CIDs, are not given due concern. Accordingly, this brief recommends reconsidering the management of CID in Ethiopia in line with the underlying structural causes and multifaceted consequences of CID as well as maintaining sustainable peace in the IDP context.

This article considers patterns of disaster displacement and displacement related to conflict and violence in Mindanao, the Philippines. Looking at IDMC data over a five-year period, it identifies temporal and spatial correlations that might help inform displacement planning and benefit community resilience building. The article invites further research and analysis on when and how different triggers of displacement are most likely to happen at the local (sub-regional) level.