Hosted by the LSE Department of Social Policy Green Team and Earth Refuge (a legal think tank dedicated to climate migrants), this webinar is uniquely structured to provide a more holistic and solutions-focused understanding of the problem of climate-driven migration and displacement. The first part of the webinar will provide a nuanced introductory understanding of the issue of hand by drawing upon the expertise of 3 specialists working across various sectors. They will explore the policy landscape, surrounding debates, the legal aspect of climate-driven migration, colonial legacies, and just transitions. The second part will feature a similarly cross-sectoral panel of experts who will discuss potential solutions, frameworks, and case studies. Lastly, there will be a Q&A session, where the audience will have ample time to ask any of the speakers questions.
The webinar will take place on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 from 1 pm - 3 pm (BST) through Zoom.
Register now to secure your free ticket! The Zoom link will be sent out to all registered ticket holders closer to the date of the event.
Speakers and Panelists
Atle Solberg is the Head of the Secretariat of the Platform on Disaster Displacement. He is a political scientist from Norway and he was the Head of the Nansen Initiative Secretariat, the predecessor of the Platform on Disaster Displacement, from 2012 to 2015. His background is primarily from international humanitarian action and from working in the context of displacement (both in conflict and natural hazard situations). He has worked for the UNHCR and UN OCHA in Switzerland, the Balkans and in Central America, and for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in the Balkans, Indonesia and Colombia. He has research and teaching experience from the University of Bergen on humanitarian issues as well as on the protection of unaccompanied minors. Atle has also undertaken evaluation of humanitarian aid and worked as a consultant both with a focus on Norway as well as on the post-conflict recovery situation in the Balkans and Central America.
Dr. Sumudu Atapattu is the Director of Research Centers and Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. She teaches in the areas of international environmental law, climate change and human rights. She holds an LL.M. in Public International Law and a Ph.D. in International Environmental Law from the University of Cambridge, U.K., and is an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Atapattu also coordinates the Human Rights Program at UW-Madison. In Sri Lanka, she worked as a Senior Research Consultant to the Law & Trust Society, a human rights organization, and as the editor of Sri Lanka: State of Human Rights 2002, an annual publication on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. She serves as the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law based in Montreal, Canada, and is on the advisory board of the McGill International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy. She has many publications in the fields of international environmental law, environmental rights and international sustainable development law and is particularly interested in the link between human rights and the environment, especially, climate change.
Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Dhaka and the founding Chair of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), the premier migration think tank of Bangladesh. She has published extensively on climate change related migration, displacement, labour migration and remittances. Dr. Siddiqui led the drafting of the National Strategy on the Management of Disaster and Climate Induced Internal Displacement in Bangladesh 2022, National Overseas Employment Policy 2006, and was a committee member that prepared the first draft of the Overseas Employment and Migration Act of 2013. Her research and advocacy work on female labour migration contributed to lifting of the ban on international migration of low-skilled women from Bangladesh in 2003. She is in the Global Editorial Board of Oxford Journal of Migration Studies. Since June 2019 she has joined the state led international initiative, the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), as a member of the Advisory Committee.
Yumna Kamel is the Executive Director and co-founder of Earth Refuge, which was established to address the gap in legal protections for climate migrants globally. Her work is centred upon legal advocacy; and in particular, empowering affected communities by amplifying their narratives, researching their corresponding legal rights, and ensuring that they are recognised. Yumna has a background in asylum and immigration law, and is the Legal Education Officer at the London-based NGO Right to Remain where she maintains the Right to Remain Toolkit, and delivers workshops about the legal system to asylum and migrant groups across the UK.
Lauren Grant spearheads geographical and thematic research and reporting on climate migration at Earth Refuge. Outside of Earth Refuge, Lauren is an advocate and researcher in the fields of climate migration, women’s, Indigenous and minority rights, violence, conflict, genocide and development. Lauren holds an MA in Human Rights from the Legal Studies Department of Central European University and is currently pursuing an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development at SOAS University of London. Lauren strives to conscientiously step aside, in order to champion grass-roots voices, victims of human rights abuses and communities who are impacted by violence, marginalization, climate change and precarity, in their fight to speak the truth of their experiences to power.
Lucinda Platt will Chair this event. She is a Professor of Social Policy and Sociology in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Lucinda’s research focuses on the analysis of inequality within and between social groups, in the UK and internationally; and she is currently a panel member for the IFS Deaton Inequality Review. As part of her work for the Deaton Review, she recently co-authored a study investigating ethnic inequalities in vulnerability to COVID-19. She also works on identity and inter-group relations, child poverty and child development, and the methodology and history of social surveys.