Author
Ms Chunya Boonyawan
Organisation/Institution
Chulalongkorn University, Faculty of Law
Country
THAILAND
Panel
Children and Law
Title
As the region sinks: Rethinking Child Rights and Climate Mobility in Southeast Asia
Abstract
Southeast Asia is moving, warming, and sinking. Slow-onset climate impacts—such as subsidence, salinisation, and coastal erosion—are often mistaken for ordinary socio-economic mobility. Yet, they quietly intensify long-standing regional pressures of poverty, inequality, and protracted conflict. These dynamics intersect with Southeast Asia’s long history of mixed migration, where movement rarely aligns with the legal categories that structure protection. Despite these transformations, children remain largely invisible in the emerging landscape of climate mobility. Regional instruments focused on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and migration management do not recognise climate-displaced children as rights-holders with specific claims. Instead, climate-induced movement is absorbed into immigration law or discretionary welfare measures, leaving children without continuity in education, healthcare, documentation, or cultural identity. Slow-onset environmental decline further obscures their protection needs, particularly for those who move without legal status or for indigenous and coastal children whose cultural and territorial identities are gradually eroded. Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms autonomy through evolving capacities, participation, and the right to identity, these principles sit uneasily with Southeast Asian childhoods, which are often shaped by collective decision-making and intergenerational obligations. Yet cultural variation cannot justify excluding children from decisions that fundamentally shape their futures. Children in the region already exercise climate-related agency in ways that the law does not acknowledge, and General Comment No. 26 reinforces that their views must be meaningfully informed in environmental and relocation policies. Southeast Asia is entering a period in which climate mobility will no longer be episodic, but structural. As the region moves, warms, and sinks, children must not remain legally invisible. Climate-induced displacement cannot be governed by frameworks designed for earlier forms of migration or disaster relief; it requires a child-centred legal approach that recognises how climate change reshapes children’s identities, opportunities, and futures. Autonomy, identity, and participation must anchor any future ASEAN response.
Biography
Chunya Boonyawan is a Lecturer in Law and the Assistant Dean for International Affairs at the Faculty of Law, Chulalongkorn University. She teaches Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law and International Politics, International Criminal Law, and Migration Law. She holds an Advanced LL.M. in International Children’s Rights from Leiden University and an LL.B. from Chulalongkorn University. Her professional experience spans work in refugee status determination, cross-border legal assistance along the Thai–Myanmar border, and child protection and anti-trafficking programmes across Southeast Asia. Her research focuses on the rights of children affected by conflict, displacement, and structural inequality, with emphasis on evolving capacities, child autonomy, and the governance of mobility in the region. She is currently developing research on climate-induced displacement and child rights in Southeast Asia, examining how slow-onset environmental change exposes persistent gaps in ASEAN’s protection frameworks. Across her academic and professional work, she is committed to advancing rights-based approaches for marginalised children and to strengthening legal recognition of children’s autonomy, identity, and participation in decisions that shape their lives.
