A/HRC/10/13 page 8 natural disasters, concluding with concrete and detailed recommendations to national Governments, the Human Rights Council and international and national organizations in general to enhance the protection of the victims of natural hazards and global warming. 20. Victims of natural hazard events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes or flooding, including displaced persons, are entitled to enjoy the full range of human rights guarantees. The question arises as to how a framework to ensure these rights can be established and put into practice. Insofar as affected persons are displaced within their own country, the Guiding Principles remain fully applicable. Context-specific guidance is now available in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Operational Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters,19 which were proposed by the Representative to support humanitarian organizations in implementing a human rights-based approach when responding to natural disasters. The Representative also developed a pilot field manual to the Operational Guidelines which was released in March 2008 and now is in the process of revision. 21. In the context of the current discussions on climate change, the Representative acknowledges that disasters such as flooding, hurricanes, desertification or even the “sinking” of stretches of land, are not new. Yet the most recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)20 indicate that their frequency and magnitude are likely to increase as a consequence of global warming. These findings are most relevant for the issue of displacement and population movements in general and imply that humanitarian and development actors will increasingly be expected to respond to situations arising from climate-related hazard events. 22. The Representative submitted a working paper to IASC in June 2008 examining the nexus between climate change and displacement and highlighting normative gaps in the current legal framework for protection of those displaced by the effects of global warming.21 He identified five relevant situations triggering displacement: (a) increased hydro-meteorological disasters such as hurricanes, flooding or mudslides; (b) gradual environmental degradation and slow onset disasters, such as desertification, sinking of coastal zones, or increased salinization of groundwater and soil; (c) the “sinking” of small island States; (d) forced relocation of people from high-risk zones; and (e) violence and armed conflict triggered by the increasing scarcity of necessary resources such as water or inhabitable land. 23. The Representative concluded that persons displaced by sudden-onset disasters due to climate change or by instances of violence or armed conflict over scarce resources should be considered as internally displaced persons within the existing international normative framework, in particular the Guiding Principles. What this framework lacks, however, is criteria 19 A/HRC/4/38/Add.1. The guidelines were endorsed by the IASC Working Group in June 2007. 20 See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm. 21 Available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/climatechange/docs/submissions/ DisplacementandCC_10102008.pdf.