Most recently, the headlines have been made by prosecution fleeing refugees and political perpetration targeting asylum seekers around the globe. While it's good that the world has been concerned about the overwhelming numbers of refugee influxes, it's alarming that the governments somehow only acknowledge "religious/political prosecution" as grounds for human rights breach and the consequent grant of refuge. But have we ever thought how climate change might also be forcing people to flee their homes to save their lives ? Let's reflect on the less obvious today.

The UN has recently ruled that people fleeing immediate danger due to the climate crisis cannot be forced to return home. Sending asylum seekers home when their lives are threatened by the climate crisis "may expose individuals to a violation of their rights" - specifically, it said, their right to life. The UN ruling - which is non-binding - is the clearest warning to countries that they may be breaching a person's human rights if they send them back to a country at immediate risk of climate-related danger.

The landmark ruling centres on the case of Ioane Teitiota, whose home - the Pacific Island of Kiribati - is threatened by rising sea levels. Mr Teitiota applied for protection in New Zealand in 2013. The UN rejected his claim, saying he wasn't in immediate danger, but the wording of its ruling allows others to claim asylum based on climate change.

"Given that the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such a country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realised," ad verbatim.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change previously warned that Kiribati was one of the six Pacific island nations most threatened by rising sea levels. The island, it said, could become uninhabitable by 2050.

Another report from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) has warned that tens of millions of people could be displaced due to climate change within the next decade, while in 2018 the World Bank said climate change would force more than 140 million people to leave their homes in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

I hope that more and more nations come out in support of and start granting asylum to the victims of climate change induced migration.