Displacement and environmental protection: legal conceptions of a plumage

Abstract

Environmental protection has in recent times taken the centre stage nationally and internationally. Access to clean and healthy environment is now seen as not only a privilege but a right; a fundamental human right. In another development, oppression, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, ethnic, religious and political crises and other violations of human rights have caused people to flee their homelands. These reasons have forced people to seek asylum in other countries or in parts of their countries of origin, thereby making them refuges or foreigners even in their own countries. These persons again, through their anthropogenic activities exacerbate the problems of environmental protection. The national and international communities are confronted with the monumental task of controlling, eradicating the causes of displacement and protecting the displaced. These responsibilities must be juxtaposed with the need to prevent environmental degradation, ensure protection of the environment and sustain a clean and healthy environment. The problem however has been that displacement and environmental protection present a vicious cycle which today has been unattended. This is the crux of the present research. The writer critically examines the Nigerian laws and policies on displacement with specific inquisition into the extent to which the laws and policies address issues of displacement and environmental protection.

Keywords: Displacement, environmental protection, Law, Plumage