Findings on intimate partner violence (IPV) in Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Liberia and Mali also indicate that women living in households in proximity to conflict experiences higher IPV rates, measured by conflict-related deaths, compared to those living in peaceful areas of the country [Klugman 2022].

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) index [8] is another comprehensive multidimensional measure, that captures women’s status in the domains of inclusion (e.g., education and paid work), justice (formal legal protection and discriminatory norms), and security (IPV and safety in the community). The index was calculated in five Sub-Saharan African countries, namely Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. In all countries, the scores for displaced women were worse than those of their non-displaced local counterparts, with an average disadvantage of about 24 percent in favour of host country women (fig. 3).

Gender gaps were greatest for employment, with occupation rates for displaced men at least 90 per cent higher than for displaced women, peaking in Nigeria where approximately 36 per cent of displaced men were employed compared to about 15 per cent of displaced women. While gender overall appears to be a major factor that interacts with context-specific challenges and also intersectional vulnerabilities, this is especially true across countries, with regard to the relationship between gender inequality, state fragility and climate vulnerability, that present ¶{p. 283}challenges to the well-being of communities and the ecosystems upon which they depend. While there is considerable research connecting pairs of these issues – for example, the need for gender-responsive approaches to realize climate goals – little attention has been devoted to the intersection of these three issues, nor to how this «triple nexus» could be taken into account within more effective sustainable development decision-making and programming.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) conducted a study to explore the links among these triple nexus topics in 122 countries where USAID was present with a country or regional mission. The three key findings emphasised the following:

1) Gender inequality, state fragility and climate, in each country of the study were, to varying degrees, positively correlated with one another. This means that countries with relatively higher values in one issue area also showed relatively higher scores in the other issue areas.

2) The triple nexus issues were particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa regions.

3) The need to invest in collecting sex-disaggregated and environmental data especially for small island states [UNEP 2020].

Moreover, beyond the status of displaced women, it is evident that there is still a gap both in policy making and in the legal framework on the population of climate-induced migrants as a whole [UNHCR 2020a]. However, this should not divert attention from the fact that the increase in climate and environmental degradation and disasters is affecting the determinants of refugee movements, as also recognised by the 2018 the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (Global Compact on Migration - GCM) [United Nations 2018].

In the general framework of what was stated above, we believe that a further element is important to help find answers to the problems associated to forced migrations. The intent is to offer ¶{p. 285}an anthropological perspective, albeit not exhaustive, based on international human rights law and policies that regulate forced migration. In doing so, particular account will be taken of the Global Compact on Migration (GCM), mentioned above. The GCM, promoted by the United Nations, is considered not only a useful tool for consolidating possible guidelines on migration policies but also an expression in its principles of a global and coordinated response to the phenomenon. Specifically, it is founded on the principles of humanity and international solidarity and has as its normative basis the Geneva Convention of 1951 and the New York Protocol of 1967 [9] , as well as international treaties on human rights [Noviello 2018]. It is the result of two years of negotiations following the so-called «New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees» with which, in September 2016, all 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously agreed to adhere to common principles in migration matters. Nonetheless, the final version of the Global Compact was signed by only 164 countries during the United Nations Conference held in Marrakech on 10 and 11 December 2018 [UN 2018]. Many EU member states were absent from the Conference, including Italy, which considered that the document, as conceived, could have led to an exponential increase in uncontrolled immigration.

This decision very clearly describes the predominantly security framework within which national and European policies on migration and asylum have developed in recent decades. In the above framework, in which as highlighted by Cataldi and Del Guercio [2019], there is a lack of awareness of what migration is – in historical, socio-economic and ethical terms – thereby resulting in the development of migratory management tools which are poorly effective, being mostly focused only on rejection policies.

The Ukrainian refugee crisis, at the beginning of 2022, brought issues relating to the management of migratory flows back to the centre of the European and global debate, lighting a beacon, in particular, on forced migrations and the need to adopt joint decisions in their governance. Directive 55/2001 [Official Journal of the European Communities 2001], regulating temporary protection was unanimously adopted by the European Council mainly ¶{p. 286}for displaced Ukrainians, although this measure had remained unapplied for 20 years despite equally large numbers of people fleeing to Europe due to conflict or serious human rights violations.

By contrast, throughout 2021 the European countries continued to pursue an ambiguous and fluctuating policy, but essentially one of closing and externalizing borders with, for example, the renewal of the agreement with Turkey which provided for the detention on its territory of those fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Concurrently, migrants have been pushed back to Libya or to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco, the Balkan route has been blocked, resulting in tension between Belarus and Poland in December 2021 with the presence of a few thousand migrants amassed on the border, and, at the same time, we continued to witness deaths in the Mediterranean Sea (about 2000 ascertained in 2021) [10] .

Faced with all this, in February 2022 the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, presenting his report on the GCM at an informal plenary meeting of the General Assembly reiterated that:

The Secretary General [United Nations 2021] provided 14 recommendations, that could serve as guidelines on the path to be taken, based on four priority areas: