Migration with Dignity vs. Forced Displacement

The issue of Liturgy entitled “Preaching Migrations,” guest-edited by Jerusha Matsen Neal, looks at movement of people; trajectories of social, economic, and cultural change; the impact of these changes on preaching. What follows is an excerpt from an article by Seforosa Carroll who is, among others things, the programme executive for Mission from the Margins/Ecumenical Indigenous Peoples Network, World Council of Churches, Geneva. She writes about the impact of rising seas on Pacific island nations and the hard choices facing the people. –– Melinda Quivik

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For low-lying atoll countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu, external migration looms large as forced relocation is an imminent option that they will need to consider. Articulating the devastating impact of what this would mean for Tuvuluans, Reverend Tafue Lusama, former General Secretary of the Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu (EKT) states, “If this small space (Tuvalu) is submerged under water, that is the end, and that is the literal death of a people, of us as a people.” Expressing a similar view in a different and practical way, in 2014 former President of Kirbati, Anote Tong purchased a 20-km. piece of land in Fiji as a back up measure for his people should sea level rise claim the country. In 2016 Tong envisaged that the migration of his people was likely to begin by the 2020s.

Under the leadership of Anote Tong, the Kiribati government developed the Migration with Dignity policy. Tong believed in the importance of planned long-term migration and/or relocation as a way of ensuring and maintaining the self-determining agency of the I-Kiribati people should they need to relocate. The policy was not only intended to convey agency through self-determination, resilience, and visibility but also to avoid the pitfalls of the I-Kiribati people becoming climate refugees. According to Tong, “Relocation, no matter how undesirable, must therefore be the brutal reality of the future of atoll island nations, and part of the solution. Kiribati has advocated that migration with dignity must be part of a climate change adaptation strategy, rather than relocation of its people as climate refugees.”

Tuvalu holds a contrary view. The former Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sapoaga, is skeptical of the term Migration with Dignity stating that there can never be any dignity or human agency in a forced displacement. Where would Tuvaluans go and what would happen to their sovereignty? A focus solely on climate induced migration can easily mask the issues of injustice that have caused the forced migration or relocation in the first place as well as shift the responsibility and focus of the underlying issue at hand. Sapoaga argues that migration implies a choice made by people to migrate; he insists that this is not the case for Tuvaluans. Tuvaluans do not choose to move, they will be forced to move.

Sapoaga asserts that forced displacement is the correct term for describing the plight of Tuvuluans and is adamant that a distinction between climate-induced migration and climate-induced displacement be clearly made. Sapoaga also argues that a focus on planned migration undermines the human agency and dignity of climate-displaced migrants as well as necessary urgent action on climate change. Sapoaga is of the determined view that there can be no Plan B for Tuvalu. In his view having a Plan B would only serve to the let the culpable emitting countries off the hook. The workshop on climate-induced migration “Toku Fenua, Toku Tofi” (My Island, My Birthright) organized by the Tuvalu Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (TANGO) held in Tuvalu in June 2018 produced an outcome statement reiterating a long-held view that migration will be considered by Tuvalu only as an option of last resort—and only after all other options have been exhausted.

All of the essays in Liturgy 36, no. 2 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Seforosa Carroll, “Displacing Liturgy: A Pacific Exploration,” Liturgy 36, no. 2 (2021): 26-35, DOI: 10.1080/0458063X.2021.1895642.