On December 13, 2024, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) submitted two reports to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in response to the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants’ call for input on the phenomenon of missing migrants.
The first submission focuses on environmental factors and examines how climate change and restrictive immigration policies contribute to migrant deaths and disappearances in the Americas. Drawing on findings from IRAP’s ongoing data collection project on environmental challenges faced by people on the move, the submission details how state-imposed barriers to border and asylum access force migrants and displaced people into hazardous terrain, where the intensifying impacts of climate change exacerbate the dangers of transit. It concludes with recommendations to strengthen protection measures.
The second submission, prepared jointly with partner organizations, highlights numerous facets of U.S. and Mexican migration policies that cause migrant disappearances, including in the context of the U.S.-Mexico land border, maritime interdictions and detention at the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center (MOC), in U.S. immigration custody, and as a result of U.S. border externalization policies. This submission follows a prior IRAP joint submission to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) on short-term enforced disappearances, building on IRAP’s MOC advocacy as well.
The comment “Climate-Related Danger and Missing Migrants” is available here.
The comment “Disappearances of Migrants as a Result of United States’ and Mexico’s Migration Policies” is available here.