LOSS AND DAMAGE AND DISPLACEMENT: KEY MESSAGES FOR THE ROAD TO COP 28

This advocacy brief calls for the mainstreaming of population displacement, forced migration and other forms of involuntary human mobility into policy and practice addressing loss and damage related to climate change. The messages in this brief are directly relevant to ongoing Loss and Damage negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the lead-up to COP 28.

Published on September 15, 2023

Loss and Damage and Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement Working Group | idrp, IDPs, Disaster, Climate, United Nations

Pakistan. Drowning in despair. 2022 © Jamil Akhtar CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

Displacement must be central to addressing climate change-related loss and damage. Climate-related displacement undermines human rights, well-being and development, resulting in a broad range of adverse impacts on individuals, communities, societies and States, raising important questions and concerns regarding climate justice. Any comprehensive approach to addressing climate-related loss and damage must endeavour to avert, minimise and provide equitable and just solutions to the adverse impacts of displacement.

The messages in this advocacy brief by the Loss and Damage and Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement Working Group are intended to inform and catalyse discussions and debates leading up to COP 28 and beyond, engaging States and regional bodies, governmental organisations, NGOs, community-based organisations, policy makers, researchers, legal experts and others in positions to avert, minimise and address displacement and mobility-related loss and damage in the context of climate change.

KEYWORDS: loss and damage; climate change; COP 28; displacement; climate justice

DOWNLOAD ADVOCACY BRIEF

This advocacy brief is co-published by the Loss and Damage Collaboration and Researching Internal Displacement. It can be found also on the Loss and Damage Collaboration webpage.

The Loss and Damage and the Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement working group is a coalition of practitioners, researchers, lawyers and activists working on human mobility at local, national and global levels. Representing a broad cross-section of voices, perspectives and interests, participants in the working group share the common conviction that climate change-related displacement must be central to efforts to assess and address loss and damage impacts, including cascading and intergenerational impacts on individuals, communities, societies and ecosystems.

Image Credits

1. Cover image: Drowning in Despair, by Jamil Akhtar via the World Meteorological Organization (7289), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Description: Residents of a village in District Sanghar in Sindh Province of Pakistan, gather to collect some emergency ration supplies after the devastating flood of 2022. This year has also had its share of floods, albeit slightly less than the previous year. Experts warn that this will probably become an annual occurrence. Pakistan has one of the smallest carbon footprints in the world while suffering from the worst effects of climate change and almost no disaster preparedness.

2. Loss and Damage Collaboration logo: Sundarbans web, by the European Space Agency, Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Researching Internal Displacement publishes engaging and insightful short pieces of writing, artistic and research outputs, policy briefings and think pieces on internal displacement.

We welcome contributions from academics, practitioners, researchers, officials, artists, poets, writers, musicians, dancers, postgraduate students and people affected by internal displacement.

Contact the Editorial Team

How to Contribute

Mobility Should Not Erase Citizenship: Internal Displacement and India’s Electoral Roll Revision

By Ryan Mitra | Jun 24, 2026

This insightful blog examines how internally displaced persons (IDPs) in India are disenfranchised from voting and participating fully in civic life. Widespread failure to recognise people’s displacement status and circumstances shifts many of the burdens of proving identity, residence and voter eligibility onto the shoulders of already traumatised people. IDPs fleeing disasters, conflict or communal violence may have lost their homes and documentation, crossed state boundaries and taken refuge in regions where their native languages are not spoken. Digital access challenges and bureaucratic inefficiencies place the burden of administrative adaptation on those least able to bear it. Too many IDPs are thereby excluded from voter lists. Though India records large numbers of new disaster displacements every year, it does not maintain a consolidated national displacement database. Such a database, the author argues, would ensure the voting and other rights of internally displaced persons are protected while providing a much-needed tool for monitoring whether IDPs are progressing toward durable solutions.

A Condition, Not an Event: Rethinking Displacement and Statelessness in Lebanon

By Duaa Nooreddine | Jun 11, 2026

This brief paper highlights the problem of "circular displacement". In Lebanon, displacement is not an event with a clear beginning and end. Nor is it simply a recurring cycle. For many affected people, it is an ongoing condition where the effects of displacement are never fully resolved and where each recurring cycle leaves people's lives further depleted. The effects are especially acute for the many stateless people displaced in a country that does not fully recognise them. Caught in a cycle of conflict and legal exclusion, stateless people in Lebanon, including Dom, Bedouin and Palestinians from Syria, struggle to access formal protection systems, restore documentation or even leave the country. Describing how existing international frameworks intended to address displacement and statelessness fail in Lebanon, the author highlights the need for both operational and legal reforms, including the establishment of a statelessness determination procedure.

The Invisible Tide: Why Climate Policy Must Address the Unspoken Losses of Coastal Youth

By Ranjan K. Panda | May 28, 2026

This moving and insightful blog, from a long-time climate advocate and champion of youth in India, examines the lived experience of 'loss and damage' by young people from the coastal state of Odisha displaced by sea level rise. Describing the broad range of intangible losses experienced by displaced youth - ranging from loss of cultural heritage and identity to adverse impacts on psychosocial health and personal agency - the article calls for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of 'non-economic loss and damage' (NELD), a concept used in climate change negotiations and other discourses but which doesn't adequately capture the depth and complexity of the losses and damages experienced by displaced young people. The author argues that these experiences should serve as a stark warning: If disaster management policies and climate adaptation planning do not urgently recognise and address the intangible losses of young people, we risk losing an entire generation to displacement, trauma and disenfranchisement.