Climate Refugees and the Human Rights Protection Gap: Legal, Ethical, and Psychological Perspectives

ABSTRACT: The growing effects of climate change are contributing to the ever-increasing scale of forced displacement. However, the concept of “climate refugees” does not have a clearly defined status in international law, which creates significant gaps in the protection of basic human rights. This paper analyzes the concept of climate displacement and the limitations of the existing international legal framework, with special reference to the right to life, health, water, food, housing, and human dignity. It advocates the thesis that the response to climate displacement requires the development of a special international legal framework based on human rights, solidarity and human dignity. At the same time, an analysis of the encyclical Laudato si’ introduces the concepts of integral ecology and ecological conversion as the basis for a moral transformation of the relationship with nature and vulnerable groups. Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and the concept of the shadow provide a psychological framework for understanding the climate crisis as a confrontation between modern civilization and its own repressed aspects, and the consequences of its relationship to nature. The paper concludes that the effective protection of climate-displaced people requires simultaneous legal, moral, and psychological transformation, based on the universality of human rights.