LOSS AND DAMAGE AND DISPLACEMENT: KEY MESSAGES FOR THE ROAD TO COP 28 (Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish Editions)

This advocacy brief, originally co-published on September 15, 2023 by the Loss and Damage Coalition and Researching Internal Displacement, is now available in Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish translations, which may be downloaded via the links below. The English edition has been accepted as a formal submission to the UNFCCC Loss and Damage Transitional Committee.

Published on October 16, 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

The messages, developed by a broad coalition of practitioners, researchers, lawyers and activists working on human mobility at local, national and global levels, are directly relevant to ongoing Loss and Damage negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The English edition has been accepted as a formal submission to the UNFCCC Loss and Damage Transitional Committee.

Displacement is one of the most detrimental outcomes of loss and damage, adversely impacting well-being and the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and potentially reversing development gains for communities and entire nations. 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.

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

DOWNLOAD ARABIC EDITION

DOWNLOAD FRENCH EDITION

DOWNLOAD ITALIAN EDITION

DOWNLOAD SPANISH EDITION

DOWNLOAD ENGLISH EDITION

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

Displacement Urbanisation in Nigeria: Governance Gaps and the Exclusion of Self-Settled IDPs

By Rebecca Enobong Roberts | Sep 10, 2026

This incisive and provocative blog calls attention to the failure of IDP governance and humanitarian systems in Nigeria to adjust to the urbanisation of displacement. Drawing on a ten-city interdisciplinary research project conducted over a seven-year period, the article argues that despite the highly visible shift toward IDP self-settlement in urban centres, established IDP protection systems and actors blindly cling to decreasingly relevant paradigms that prioritise conflict zones and IDP camps. This has left the growing number of urban IDPs in Nigeria without adequate rights protections and structurally excluded from urban services and institutions, even as their presence profoundly reshapes urban spaces. The author argues that IDP rights protections and the provision of lasting solutions must be embedded within mainstream systems of urban governance. Government and humanitarian actors need to move beyond treating internal displacement as an exceptional but temporary humanitarian emergency and, instead, recognise urban IDPs as long-term residents whose inclusion is essential to equitable and sustainable urban and national development.

Who are “IDPs” – and why does it matter?

By David Cantor | Sep 3, 2026

Internal displacement is a major societal challenge worldwide, with far-reaching consequences for the tens of millions of people displaced annually as well as for affected communities and society as a whole. As such, the low level of interest in this phenomenon among researchers and policymakers represents a puzzle. A new Handbook of Internal Displacement seeks to change this situation by raising the profile of the issue for researchers, teachers, policymakers, funders, humanitarian workers and development actors and addressing the wide range of dynamics, debates and challenges that internal displacement entails. This groundbreaking publication provides extensive regional analysis of displacement in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and offers a distinctive global vision of “internal displacement” as an emerging field of research and practice.

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.