A/67/299 tension, and thereby have an impact on a range of economic, social and cultural rights, thus spurring the need for mobility. Other climate-change-induced factors can also pose severe threats to human rights, including threats to life and livelihood, such as famine and drought, which often seem misclassified as mere incentives to migration and not worthy of proper human rights protections in themselves. 65. Thus, the phenomenon of climate-change-induced migration may require rethinking of the human rights categories afforded to migrants and the development of eventual protection mechanisms for persons on the move. The Special Rapporteur remains aware, however, that it may not necessarily be ideal to single out those migrants who move for environmental reasons. Over and above the aforementioned difficulties of proving causality, there are many other categories of vulnerable migrants who also need protection. Rather, the Special Rapporteur encourages the development of coherent policies regarding the rights of all migrants, which takes into account the myriad circumstances which lead people to migrate, including the need for human rights protections, in particular for those who are “induced” or “forced” to migrate. 3. Needs of citizens of low-lying island States 66. One category of climate-change-induced migrants that international law needs to consider urgently is those who inhabitant low-lying island States. Though it appears unlikely, despite sensationalist reports, that many countries will completely disappear owing to rising sea levels, a very real concern remains that some of those countries may become uninhabitable, likely owing to insufficiency of fresh water resources. 31 67. To date, the international legal framework appears to be largely inadequate to address such a situation. The first article of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States requires that a State possess four elements: a permanent population; a defined territory; a government; and a capacity to enter into relations with other States. 32 Yet, a legal issue that remains unresolved is the status of the State after the disappearance of one of the elements established by the Montevideo Convention. Furthermore, although international law provides that a State may become extinct under certain circumstances such as absorption, merger and voluntary or involuntary dissolution, 33 the situation of a State abandoned by its population due to the effects of climate change is simply so new that no clear international legal framework appears to apply. 68. Of greater importance, perhaps, is the legal status of the population of a disappearing State. The Special Rapporteur notes that it remains unclear how international law would protect those affected persons. On the one hand, the international legal framework on statelessness is of little help, as the Convention does not automatically allow a stateless person to enter a third State. 34 On the other hand, as noted above, the need to leave one’s country as a result of environmental __________________ 31 32 33 34 16 See generally: Jane McAdam, “Disappearing States”, Statelessness and the Boundaries of International Law, in Climate Change and Displacement: multidisciplinary perspectives, pp. 105-130, Jane McAdam ed. (Hart Publishing, Portland, Oregon, 2010). Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), art. 1. James R. Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954). 12-46071