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The 52-page report, “‘The Sea is Eating the Land Below Our Homes’: Indigenous Community Facing Lack of Space and Rising Seas Plans Relocation,” documents both why the Gardi Sugdub community decided to relocate and how government delays and incomplete support for relocation have stalled the move and left the community in limbo. Human Rights Watch found that while some aspects of Panamanian government and Inter-American Development Bank support for the community have been exemplary, urgent action is needed to ensure that community members’ rights are respected in the relocation.
The Panamanian government has national and international obligations to protect people from reasonably foreseeable risks to rights, including due to sea level rise and other climate change impacts. But planned relocation carries its own risks, including threats to people’s rights, and requires policies grounded in dignity and other human rights principles: a planned relocation must at minimum restore, or ideally improve, the standard of living of relocating people and their host communities. It