A/HRC/37/35 I. Introduction 1. On 6 October 2017, the Human Rights Council held, pursuant to its resolution 35/20, an intersessional panel discussion on human rights, climate change, migrants and persons displaced across international borders.1 2. The panel discussion was chaired by the President of the Human Rights Council and was opened by the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, who delivered a statement. 3. The panel discussion provided an opportunity for States, international organizations and other stakeholders to address the relationship between human rights, climate change, migrants and persons displaced across international borders, with a focus on challenges to and opportunities in the promotion, protection and fulfilment of human rights of migrants and persons displaced across international borders in the context of the adverse effects of climate change. 4. The panel began with a keynote address by video message from the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration. The panellists were the Envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement, Walter Kaelin; the Executive Director of Greenpeace Africa, Njeri Kabeberi; the National Coordinator of the Kiribati National Youth Association of NGOs, Itinterunga Rae Bainteiti; and the founder of the South American Network for Environmental Migrations (RESAMA), Erika Ramos. II. Opening session 5. Opening the discussion, the Deputy High Commissioner observed that both suddenonset events and the slow-onset effects of climate change had a devastating impact on people and the planet. Since 2008, an estimated 22.5 million people per year had been displaced, internally or across borders, by weather or climate-related disasters. Slow-onset processes, such as rising sea levels, the degradation of freshwater resources, erosion desertification, ocean acidification and glacial retreat threatened to cause even more human misery. 6. Climate change disproportionately harmed the poor, children, women, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and minorities – the people who had contributed the least to global warming. For example, almost half the population of Bangladesh lived in delta areas, some 78 per cent of the population lived on less than $3.10 a day, and a majority worked in the agricultural sector. People living in such circumstances were exceptionally vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather events, rising sea levels, flooding, erosion and groundwater contamination. 7. The impact of climate change affected the enjoyment of a broad range of human rights by millions of people, including the rights to food, to water and sanitation, to health, and to adequate housing. Migrants that fled the effects of climate change did so not out of choice but out of the need to escape conditions that could not provide for even the most fundamental of their rights. Throughout their migration, they faced xenophobia, difficulty in their access to food, water, health care and housing, and the ever-present threats of arbitrary detention, human trafficking, violent attack, rape and torture, among others. 8. In the Global Migration Group, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had been leading efforts to devise a set of principles and guidelines on the protection of the human rights of migrants in vulnerable situations, which would apply to many of those forced to migrate owing to the adverse effects of climate change. Guidelines of this type were necessary to ensure the protection of those who may not qualify for refugee status but that nonetheless require greater protection of their human rights by States. The Deputy High Commissioner emphasized that international human 1 2 The full video of the panel discussion is available on the website of UN Web TV (www.webtv.un.org).