2024 has been an inspiring and impactful year for Women in Migration Network (WIMN), capped by the Feminist Forum on Migration and Displacement (FFMD) in Bangkok, Thailand, just concluded this month. It could not have been a more fitting culmination of this busy year.
Organized with WIMN members and partners, the FFMD brought together over 120 participants from 35 countries towards envisioning a feminist migration policy. Under the banner of “Feminist Solidarity: Rights without Borders,” the diverse grassroots turnout and interactive agenda fueled new ideas, refinements and energy. This included a call for solidarity at the closing plenary of the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) Forum following the FFMD which demanded “dignity and equal rights for all migrant women and gender diverse migrants.”
Read the full statement from the FFMD here.
This year, WIMN committed to expanding and strengthening grassroots participation and language justice, while taking steps to build a bottom-up, intersectional feminist migration policy. These aims came together in the FFMD with deliberate outreach to grassroots migrant, labor and women’s organizations from various global regions. The integration of translation and interpretation in seven different languages, and activities that drew on lived experiences led to strategies in the areas of regular pathways, care work, climate-related displacement, the impact of war and occupation on displacement and migrant women workers, hardening of borders and criminalization of migrants, migrant political participation and freedom of association, and multiple forms of discrimination. We’ll publish a report on contributions and outcomes in the coming months.
We have truly valued the diversity and strength of our members and the development of new relationships throughout this past year.
Here’s a snapshot of our work in 2024:
- WIMN members from several member organizations participated in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in Geneva in February, 2024. They spoke on panels and in side events, hosted a Women’s Caucus, and met with the new Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. We circulated a briefing document with positions on key GFMD themes, and co-hosted the side-event, “Eliminating gender-based violence as vital to migration governance for resilience and social development”. WIMN Board member Vani Saraswathi of Migrant Rights.org served as civil society gender rapporteur, working in an intersectional team that also focused on race and age.
- Following the GFMD, many members stayed in Geneva for the UN Network on Migration (UNNM) annual meeting. WIMN is an active member of the Gender Workstream of the UNNM. This year we collaborated to develop gendered indicators as a contribution to the UNNM Indicators that will measure progress on implementation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM).
- We have been hosting virtual dialogues with feminist leaders and grassroots communities to explore the complex relationship of gender, climate, displacement and community resistance, beginning with a graphic primer on gender, climate and migration that we created with the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). In May, we focused on the displacement of the Guatemalan community of Laguna Larga, and spotlighted the resistance and resilience of people to environmental exploitation. Multilingual info-graphics from the dialogues can be found here. Plans are underway for new dialogues in 2025–virtual events valued for shared learning, connection and solidarity.
- WIMN convened a second cohort of LIGA, our global advocacy leadership development program. Four local organizations, based in Kuwait, Thailand, Indonesia and Nepal and engaged in migrant rights advocacy have been involved in our virtual program. Along with members of the first LIGA cohort, they took on leadership roles in WIMN activities in Bangkok this month.
- WIMN members had a strong presence at the March 2024, 68th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which focused on women in poverty. With several member organizations, WIMN coordinated the parallel event, “Climate, Gender, Migration: Public Services, Decent Work & Rights-Based Pathways,” and shared Policy Demands: Gender, Climate and Migration. WIMN also joined member events related to the Social Organization of Care, a UN Women-organized side event, and attended a rally for a ceasefire in Gaza.
- In May, WIMN called for an Immediate and Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza and an end to occupation. Our statement noted the role this conflict is playing in massive displacement and the gendered impacts of the humanitarian crisis.
- As an active member of the Gender & Trade Coalition, WIMN partnered with GTC to issue an “explainer” on gender, trade and migration this past September. Four gender and trade explainers were publicly launched at the AWID Forum in Bangkok in December, where WIMN participated in a dynamic GTC workshop.
- In October, WIMN Board Member Lucy Turay, founder of the Domestic Workers Advocacy Network (DoWAN) in Sierra Leone, represented WIMN as a speaker at the Global Compact on Migration (GCM) Regional Review in Addis Ababa. Speaking from her own experience as a migrant worker, Lucy reiterated the importance of including migrant workers in the development of policies, worker organizing, and collaboration with civil society groups in areas of legal aid, psychosocial support and more.
As we turn the corner into 2025, WIMN will create space for grassroots participation in advocacy to advance feminist migration policies in activities like the GFMD in Colombia and the run up to the next review of the Global Compact on Migration–the International Migration Review Forum in 2026. (We’re already working with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung to publish a Spotlight Report on the GCM, likely in January 2026). In March, 2025 we’ll be gathering with members and partners for activities in New York at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the1995 UN Women’s Conference in Beijing. WIMN is assessing how women in migration have fared over these 30 years in terms of women’s rights.
But to be more effective and accountable in our advocacy, growing our membership, strengthening our staffing and operational capacity and expanding resources remain paramount. We invite your continued connection and support of WIMN on this journey.