FRANCE PHOTO SET REFUGEES DAY

Anzoumane Sissoko, the climate refugee who became a deputy mayor in Paris

epa11422030 Anzoumane Sissoko (L), deputy mayor of the 18th arrondissement in Paris, joins activists from the 'Sans Papier' movement, (French for Without Papers, undocumented people) during a weekly protest demanding that their status becomes legal, in Paris, France, 14 June 2024 (issued 19 June 2024). Sissoko, 59, has lived in France since 1993, after fleeing his home country Mali because of a severe drought during the 1970s and 1980s. Sissoko, therefore, considers himself a 'climate refugee', although that status is not officially recognized by the Geneva Convention. While Sissoko has spent the past three decades in France, he had to fight for years to obtain documents allowing him to live and work in the country legally. He eventually became a naturalized French citizen in 2015, more than 20 years after arriving. He tells EPA that his experiences as a climate refugee and an undocumented migrant are what inspired him to work with and eventually become a member of the green Ecologists party in France. In his role as a public official and deputy mayor, he works with undocumented people living irregularly in France, both foreign migrants and those born in the country who are living precariously. 'We live side-by-side with people (without legal documentation) who are in these vulnerable situations. As elected officials, we don?t have the right to regularize them, nor to expel them,' Sissoko explains. 'So what should we do? I think the best (approach) is to work with these people who are competent assets, as they showed during the Covid pandemic when they proved they can be useful in jobs that have a shortage of applicants.' According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) some 20 million people every year are displaced by weather-related events, and a World Bank report in 2021 warned that up to 216 million people could be climate refugees by 2050. EPA/ANDRE PAIN ATTENTION: This Image is part of a PHOTO SET

▶제보는 카톡 okjebo