LAWAL OLAWALE ISKIL

History and International Relations

At the History And International Relations department office

Appointment on Visitation important

Topic: Carbon Footprint, The Environment And Refugee Movement

Description: Carbon footprint is the climatic burden which a refugee carries into his host state. A refugee will have to cook his meal, transport himself from one place to the other and engages in all human activities often directly or indirectly expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide CO2 . What is established here is that the influx of refugees into a particular area creates further depletion of the ozone layer through their carbon footprints. While refugees have rights to international protection, a state also has responsibilities to protect its environment. At the centre of these is the place of law which eventually will have to regulate these fears and challenges. However, within the gamut of international protection, lurks the failure to establish a legal framework for climate refugee. This happens only because international protection law assumes that the cause of the statelessness of a refugee must be animate. Now, as things stand, where persecution does not possess, nor has the characteristic of life, it is often difficult to establish a legal basis for protection. This work addresses the need for legal framework to clearly protect the environment and climate refugee, in order to prevent the often resort to self-help in a matter that deserves some judicial interventions. This work is exploratory and employs snowball sampling technique. This work identifies the lacunae in international protection with regard to the regulation of the relations between the environment and climate refugee and suggests the need for a protection regime for both the environment and climate refugees.

#	Certificate	School	Year
1.	Ph.D (Migration and Refugee Studies)	Political Science, University of Ibadan	2016

The Kafala System in the Gulf Countries, Nigerian Migrant Workers and My Migration Story Network

Many Nigerian migrant workers daily send distress calls through a Non-governmental organisation known as My Migration Story Network (MMSN) to authorities in Nigeria, seeking interventions in disconsolate labour frameworks in most Gulf countries. The regularity of the complaints raises an inquiry into the migrant labour system of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and it was discovered that these Nigerian migrants are victims of the Kafala labour system in the GCC countries. The kafala system is a labour legal framework that defines the relationship between migrant workers and their employers called the kafeel (sponsor). It gives legal control of migrant workers to their sponsors relating to their employment and immigration status. The operation of the kafala system is not subject to international labour law because it is designed as an immigration policy of the countries where it operates. This work examines the intervention of the MMSN in Nigeria, exposing the ills of the kafala system in the host countries where Nigerians are migrant workers. The MMSN’s basic strategy in achieving its objectives is reporting of cases brought to it to Nigerian migration agencies like the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), States Anti Human Trafficking Commissions, National Refugee Commission, Nigeria Diaspora Commission, etc. The System theory provided the framework for the study, and the research design was exploratory. Data were collected from primary respondents through focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews (IDIs) with direct victims of the Kafala system and officials of the MMSN. Secondary data on the kafala system were drawn from libraries and media reports. The research hopes to achieve policy interventions for Nigerian victims of the Kafala system.

LAWAL OLAWALE is a Professor at the Department of History and International Relations

LAWAL has a Ph.D in Migration and Refugee Studies from Political Science, University of Ibadan