UN rights panel finds climate change can be cause for asylum

A U.N. human rights panel has ruled for the first time that people fleeing the effects of climate change may be entitled to claim asylum, even as it dismissed an individual plaintiff’s case against his deportation from New Zealand. The U.N. Human Rights Committee published its ruling Tuesday in the case of a man from Kiribati who was sent back to the Pacific island nation after being denied asylum by New Zealand in 2015. The Geneva-based panel, which monitors states’ compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, concluded that although the deportation was legal, similar cases might in future justify asylum claims.

Source: yahoo.com/news