Women’s rights are migration rights. Gender justice is climate justice.
Women’s History Month is an important time to recognize and uplift how the fight for women and gender-marginalized people intersects with every global justice movement.
UUSC is grateful to partner with the Women in Migration Network (WIMN), an international cohort focused on the rights of all women affected by migration. WIMN recently joined the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Foundation and leading researchers to produce the 2026 Spotlight Report on Global Migration (SRGM). This urgent resource identifies both systems of oppression enacted by the state that harm people in migration and effective pathways towardd ignified migration and better governance.
Two of the researchers who worked on the report were UUSC’s Global Advocacy Strategist, Mayuri Anupindi, and Participatory Research Fellow, Amber Khan. Anupindi and Khan share highlights from the report and thoughts on the research process in the following interview:
How did you get involved with the WIMN Spotlight Report on Global Migration?
UUSC is a member of the Women in Migration Network, who initiated this project. As part of developing the report, WIMN asked its members for positive examples of migration policies that could inspire policymakers. Drawing upon our work with grassroots climate action networks in the Pacific, we raised two examples: the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility and the Falepili Union Treaty between Australia and Tuvalu. We were asked to write about them in the report section on Climate Migration.
What surprised you most while researching and writing this report?
First, the level of interest in the visa scheme of the Falepili Union treaty. By late June 2025, 8,750 Tuvaluans (residing both within and outside Tuvalu) had applied for the scheme, and 250 people had been offered a visa. Tuvalu’s population is only 10,600. Now, this does not mean that every applicant intends to move permanently to Australia, nor are they only motivated by climate concerns, but it does show that there is an overwhelming demand for mobility.
Second, the level of criticism of the Falepili Union Treaty. This shouldn’t be surprising, but our partners, while welcoming some aspects of the visa scheme, felt that this treaty is not a solution. Their land and way of life are invaluable. They emphasized that if Australia was serious about climate justice in the Pacific, they would stop expanding fossil fuel mining and fossil fuel subsidies.
What do you feel are the report’s most urgent takeaways on climate migration?
First, while most climate migration will continue to occur within countries, there is a need and demand for cross-border climate migration pathways that respect people’s humanity and dignity. This means people need the freedom to move back and forth between one’s home and destination country. They need the right to work and pursue education from the time they arrive and the right to family reunification among other things.
Second, in a world where global cooperation seems increasingly difficult, regional cooperation on climate migration may model important advancements with less resistance. Regional relationships also help prepare for likely migration pathways in the event of climate disasters.
If you could select 3 points from other sections of the report to highlight, what would they be?
We would highlight some of the positive stories. We’re in dire need to hear more about them. Many states have proven that migration challenges are not insurmountable, and hearing those success stories expands people’s sense of what’s possible. The chapter on regularization discusses examples of countries regularizing thousands, even millions of undocumented migrants—Colombia’s decision to provide three million Venezuelans with temporary protected status, Thailand’s regularization of undocumented migrants including Burmese refugees, and Spain’s extraordinary expansion of the regularization of undocumented migrants. As the authors of the Criminalization section of the report note, “criminalization of migration is a policy choice, not an inevitability.”
The chapter on digitalization, in addition to pointing to harmful impacts of technology on migrants, also contains examples of people in migration using technology to organize themselves. They warn one another about exploitative recruiters, for example. Finally, the chapter on the care economy contains so many examples of domestic worker unions achieving wins for their workers across the world.
You outline recommendations for states to improve migration pathways. Imagine a world in which these changes are implemented. What further dreams do you have for the future of climate migration policies?
We need to start considering climate migration policies as an aspect of climate reparations and expand them accordingly. Drawing upon the work of the many climate-impacted communities that UUSC works with, we also hope that countries around the world adopt dignified and rights-respecting planned relocation policies for communities that wish to relocate together. But ultimately, the dream is that the world acts to transition away from fossil fuels so that more people can thrive in their homes, and this need becomes less urgent.
Read the full report to learn more about effective, dignified migration pathways and innovative futures. As the researchers assert, the dismal state of many migration pathways is a crisis of governance, not migration itself. All people have the right to migrate and the right to defend their existing communities from climate terror. This Women’s History Month, may we recommit ourselves to the intersecting work of the gender, migration, and climate justice movements.
