The warning comes days before COP31, the UN climate conference, opens in the Turkish city of Antalya on 9 November. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it would use the talks to call on governments and climate finance institutions to include refugees and other displaced populations in national climate plans and financing mechanisms.
In its report, UNHCR said people forced to flee conflict, violence and persecution find themselves in places grappling with severe droughts, deadly floods and extreme heat. "Refugees face a double injustice," said Anton Leis Garcia, UNHCR's assistant high commissioner for operations. "Forced to flee conflicts they did not cause, they are now on the frontlines of a climate crisis they have contributed least to."
The agency said more than two-thirds of refugees who returned home during the first half of this year went back to countries highly vulnerable to climate hazards. In Syria, where nearly four million displaced people have recently returned, declining groundwater and climate shocks were threatening recovery, and flooding along the Euphrates River last May damaged homes and displaced thousands once again.
Extreme heat is also a growing threat, the report said, with one in three refugee settlements across sub-Saharan Africa potentially facing 100 or more days of dangerous heat each year by 2050. Weather-related disasters are meanwhile spurring displacement within countries, causing more than 255 million internal displacements worldwide over the past decade, about 70,000 each day.
UNHCR said this year's exceptionally strong El Nino was expected to cause even more displacement. In East Africa, forecasts indicate severe flooding linked with the weather phenomenon could displace up to three million people across Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda by the end of 2026.
The agency noted that only 10% of global climate finance goes to fragile and conflict-affected countries hosting large populations of climate-exposed displaced people. "For millions, climate change is not a distant threat. It is destroying shelters, undermining livelihoods and putting their hopes of rebuilding their lives at risk," Mr Garcia said. "We cannot allow those who have already lost so much to be left behind in global climate action."