OBJECTIVE: Fondazione Rut aims to present its project “Digital Platform for Human Rights” over the course of three high-level UN events: the forthcoming Cop 28 in Dubai in December 2023, the Summit of the Future to be held in September 2024 alongside the conference on Sustainable Development Goals, and the COP 30 to be held in Belem in November 2025.
The final outcome that will be presented in Belem will be the result of a participative and collaborative interdisciplinary research carried out by Fondazione Rut, Congregazione Opera Don Calabria with the involvement of national and international actors.
The research will benefit from a series of meetings, focus groups and workshops to be carried out between 2024 and 2025.
The workshop to be held at the COP 28 in Dubai represents the first step of this process.
The Digital Platform for Human Rights is a tool that aims to create a network of researchers, civil society organizations, activists and groups of the diaspora, who could share ideas, opportunities, good practices and analysis, following a “foresight” methodology.
Among the rights analysed on the platform, the ones related to the environment and migration will necessarily feature as a transversal axis.
GLOBAL CONTEXT: Centuries of political and economic violence have led to resource exploitation and depletion, forcing entire populations and communities to abandon their lands and migrate in search of safety.
Exile appears as a major cultural, political, environmental and social phenomenon in our societies, as wars, violence, violations of human rights and, not the least, climate change, are forcing people to flee their territories, turning them into climate exiles.
However, unlike refugees, who are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The Geneva Convention, climate exiles do not enjoy any juridical status.
Yet, in 2022 almost 32.6 million people were internally displaced because of extreme events linked to climate change, and it is estimated that almost 250 people globally will be forced to migrate due to the climate crisis.
STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE: Fondazione Rut is well entitled to bring to the table a thorough historical and anthropological analysis of exile, rooted in its research work and its interconfessional dialogue, with the aim to impact on climate diplomacy.
The story of the biblical figure of Rut, to whom the Foundation owes its name, is one of exile due to an environmental cause: famine.
The link between interconfessional dialogue and climate diplomacy is shown by the recent Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
A whole chapter of the Accords is in fact dedicated to climate change and its mitigation in the Middle East, an area where resources are already scarce.
At the same time, the strategic cooperation with the Congregazione Opera Don Calabria for the realization of the workshop “Health, Relief, Recovery and Peace” and the implementation of the Digital Platform for Human Rights will allow the Foundation to further investigate, through a participative methodology, the themes of care, health and education.
Finally, the already existing presence of the Congregation in the Brazilian State of Parà will make it a strategic ally in the final presentation of the platform at the COP30 in Belem.
THE STRATEGIC FORESIGHT Strategic Foresight is a new approach based on Futures Thinking, which Fondazione Rut will make use of in the development of its Digital Platform for Human Rights, in particular in relation to the UN Agenda 2030, the widening and reconfiguration of human rights and the issue of exile.
Through this methodology, the Foundation aims to use a quantitative and statistical approach that will classify countries based on their future risk to adverse aspects of climate change.
However, predictive probabilities are not only determined by actual trends in a specific sector, but also by the increasingly interlinked factors that characterize our societies.
Therefore, Strategic Foresight takes into account various elements, in what is known as STEEP approach (Social, Technological, Economical, Environmental, Political).