Looking at IMRF from the ground

Sunita Mainali

Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), Nepal

From 5–8 May 2026, member states, civil society organisations, donors, INGOs, faith-based organisations, and only a small number of migrant workers gathered in New York for the Second International Migration Review Forum (IMRF). For many people from the Global South, even reaching the United States to attend such a forum is a difficult journey. Complicated visa processes, lack of funding, security barriers, language limitations, and cultural unfamiliarity create multiple layers of exclusion for grassroots organisations and migrant workers who hope to bring their voices into global decision-making spaces.

Many attend these forums carrying the stories of migrants who continue to face exploitation, violence, disappearance, and death. Yet, in these highly formal international spaces, those realities often become invisible. There is a painful contradiction between the language of rights used in global forums and migrants’ lived experiences on the ground.

In 2018, member states adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), committing to review progress at local, national, regional, and global levels through a process that includes all relevant stakeholders. Based on this commitment, the second IMRF was convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to assess progress and shape the direction of migration governance for the next five years.

However, an important question remained throughout the forum: who truly shapes the agenda, and whose voices are centered in the process? The member states’ discussions repeatedly focused on migration management, border security, and risk reduction rather than on migrants’ rights, dignity, and freedom. During the stakeholder consultations, many grassroots women-led organisations, migrant networks, and migrant workers waited for opportunities to speak. Hands remained raised for long hours, yet many voices were never heard. The imbalance was visible. States and donors dominated the discussions, while migrants themselves remained at the margins of conversations about their own lives.

[In the photo: Sunita Mainali speaking in a side event co-organised by APWLD, Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants and Asia Pacific Research Network at the IMRF in New York. Photo by Aliza Yuliana, APWLD]

For countries like Nepal, this reality is deeply connected to the lives of women migrant workers. Nepal continues to impose restrictions and bans on women’s labour migration in the name of protection. These policies are rooted in patriarchal ideas that seek to control women’s mobility, sexuality, and decision-making power. Women migrant workers have repeatedly demanded freedom from discrimination and the right to make decisions about their own lives. Yet society and the state continue to treat women’s mobility as a matter of family and national honour.

The result is dangerous. Migration bans do not stop migration; they push women into undocumented and unsafe channels, increasing their risk of trafficking, exploitation, violence, and abuse. At the IMRF, there was very limited discussion on the realities faced by returnee women migrants, the struggles of families seeking justice for women who died abroad, or the failures of reintegration systems. Both sending and receiving countries showed weak political commitment to addressing these issues.

Women migrant workers are resisting patriarchal control every day. By choosing migration, organising collectively, and demanding rights, they challenge systems that seek to silence them. Across communities, there are countless stories of resilience, solidarity, and survival. Grassroots women migrants came to the IMRF hoping to bring these realities into global conversations.

Instead, many sessions focused heavily on praising donor support, discussing national security, and reinforcing state-centered approaches. Guided by xenophobic ideology, migrants were too often treated as risks to be managed rather than as rights holders. The exclusion was not only political but also practical. On the second and third days, meeting halls became overcrowded, and some participants who had traveled across continents were asked by security personnel to leave the rooms in a disrespectful manner. For many grassroots participants who had struggled to secure visas and funding, this reflected a wider problem of exclusion and unequal access within global governance spaces.

At the same time, there were moments that offered hope. During a major session at the General Assembly, the United Nations Secretary-General spoke against the criminalisation of migrants. A powerful intervention by a woman migrant worker demonstrated the strength of collective organising and feminist solidarity. Her words reminded the forum that migrants are not merely beneficiaries of policies but political actors with agency, knowledge, and leadership. After repeated efforts to register her name and secure speaking time, the Migration Program Officer from Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Aliza Yuliana, finally got the opportunity to speak. She emphasised the urgent need to ensure the meaningful participation and voices of grassroots women migrants in migration discussions. She highlighted the issues faced by marriage migrants and returnee women migrants, as well as the challenges of reintegration, and called for these concerns to be meaningfully addressed and tabled in all migration forums.

Similarly, the statement delivered by Mission Head of Permanent Mission of Nepal to the United Nations Lok Bahadur Thapa emphasised the need for gender-transformative approaches throughout all stages of migration. Such commitments are meaningful only if they lead to concrete action. This includes ending discriminatory migration bans, revising gender-bias migration policies, strengthening diplomatic accountability, ensuring legally binding bilateral labour agreements, ensuring social and economic reintegration of returnee migrant women and addressing all forms of discrimination against women migrant workers.

The overall reflection from the second IMRF is clear: global migration governance cannot be inclusive without the meaningful participation of migrants themselves, especially grassroots women migrants. The principle of “nothing about migrants without migrants” must move beyond rhetoric. Structural barriers that silence women migrant workers — including visa restrictions, language barriers, financial exclusion, and unequal access to decision-making spaces — must be dismantled. Donors and international institutions must also move beyond charity-based approaches and recognise migration justice as a political and human rights issue. Support for migrant-led and grassroots organisations is not a favor; it is part of the broader commitment to human rights and social justice.

A feminist and transformative approach to migration demands more than representation. It requires shifting power, centering lived experiences, and recognising migrant women as leaders of change. Only then can forums like the IMRF become truly democratic spaces where the realities, struggles, and visions of migrants are genuinely heard and respected.

About the author

Sunita Mainali is the executive director of WOREC, one of the leading feminist organisations in Nepal that works towards women’s rights and social justice, preventing violence against women and ensuring economic, social and cultural well-being of women. WOREC is one of APWLD’s Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) partners from 2022-2024, focusing on the social reintegration of returned women migrant workers.