Issack Hassan lives in a migrant camp in the Somali city of Baidoa, one of more than a million people displaced since January after five consecutive failed rainy seasons.
With Somalia in the midst of its worst drought in 40 years, “people were weakened by hunger, so we had to flee for our lives,” Hassan, 82, said. But he could not escape the tragedy.
“My wife starved to death here and I was left helpless,” he said in a video interview distributed by the UN refugee agency.
About 22 million people like Hassan are displaced each year by climate-related disasters, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Some had lived along coastlines or on islands that are losing land to rising seas. Others in the Arctic fled the crumbling cliffs as the permafrost thawed.
Uprooted, they become more vulnerable to violence, hunger and disease, experts say. And with climate change fueling increasingly extreme weather around the world, the number of displaced people is expected to grow to around 143 million by mid-century.
Given the growing need, developing countries at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt this month are calling for more help from rich nations.
Some are looking for more funding to adapt to weather extremes. They also want rich nations to pay for losses and damages that are now being seen.
“Every government affected by climate change migrants can raise the issue” at the UN summit, said Caroline Dumas, IOM’s special envoy for migration and climate action.
Most of the displaced remain in their country of origin, so their governments can represent them as citizens. But those who cross an international border can end up without a safety net, as climate migrants do not qualify for refugee status under the UN Refugee Convention.
“I am a refugee, a former refugee,” said Emtithal Mahmoud, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. The Sudanese-American poet, whose family was driven out of Sudan by war, told Reuters she also experienced the wreckage that extreme weather can produce.
“There’s something I know about drought,” he said. “For us, the drought kills the plants, it kills everything, and then the rain wipes out your houses,” he said.
