People displaced by climate crisis to testify in first-of-its-kind hearing in US. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear how climate is driving forced migration across the Americas. Communities under imminent threat from rising sea level, floods and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday, as the region’s foremost human rights body holds a first-of-its-kind hearing on how climate catastrophe is driving forced migration across the Americas. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear from people on the frontline of the climate emergency in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia, as part of a special hearing sought by human rights groups in Latin America, the US and the Caribbean.    A growing number of migrants and refugees trying to seek sanctuary in the US and other countries are being displaced by hurricanes, heatwaves and drought, as well as slow-onset climate disasters such as ocean acidification, coastal erosion and desertification. The witnesses will include Higinio Alberto Ramírez from Honduras, who last year suffered life-altering injuries when a fire razed a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, killing 43 migrants from Latin America. Ramírez is from Cedeño, a coastal fishing town that is disappearing under rising sea levels, and was trying to reach the US to pay off family debts after tidal waves destroyed the shrimp nursery where he and his father worked. “The case of the Ramírez family is a tragic reminder that forced migration is not an issue for the future. Sea levels have been rising due to climate change for decades. States and humanitarian systems must catch up and ensure that protections are in place,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Mexico based Institute for Women in Migration (Imumi), one of the groups which requested the hearing. The climate crisis poses an existential threat to coastal communities such as Cedeño, where at least 300 metres of land – and with it scores of hotels, restaurants, shops, schools and homes – have been submerged over the past few years amid increasingly frequent and destructive tidal floods and storm surges.Honduras, and the vast majority of countries and island nations in the region, have contributed minimally to the greenhouse gases driving global heating. Yet they are among some of the world’s most vulnerable, thanks to a mix of geography, poverty, political instability and limited access to climate adaptation and mitigation measures.....read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/hearing-forced-migration-climate-change-us-central-america