Joint Statement on International Migrants Day, December 18, 2025
On December 13th, several migrant organizations came together with engaged social movements to exchange experiences and strategies – and here we share some highlight reflections.
Migrants in a global and regional context
This year, the International Migrants Day comes on December 18th amid an unprecedented forced displacement of people globally and escalating attacks on migrants including refugees, and their rights. This is taking place against the backdrop of the intensifying crisis of capitalism and imperialism in the world, the escalation of wars, genocide and settler colonial occupation, and illegal o in Palestine ; the destruction of nature and humanity, impoverishment, and widespread starvation. This comes together with the violation of fundamental human rights and collective and individual freedoms throughout the world, amid the global rise of the fascist right forces, its accession to power and place in governments, and its domination of the international political arena.
In the United States, the re-elected President, began his second term by immediately continuing the building of the racist wall separating Mexico and the United States on the one hand, and imposing the most repressive anti-migrant and anti-immigrant policies and measures in the history of the United States. In this country, built by immigrants and a country of immigration, the streets of the largest American cities are turned into real war zones and hunting grounds for immigrants, who are arrested, brutally assaulted, imprisoned, and illegally deported in a terrifying fascist spectacle.
As for Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the rest of the Caribbean, the region is witnessing the forced dislocation and movement of people due to the fact that more than two million displaced persons and refugees from Haiti are forced to cross one of the most dangerous migration routes to America, where migrants are subjected to the worst forms of exploitation, slavery, human trafficking, and other crimes.
In Europe, as in the US, the fundamental rights of migrant and refugee people, have also been systematically dismantled. In all countries in Europe, including in the member states of the European Union, the questions of migration and asylum have been turned into racist and fascist political rhetoric as the rightist political parties continue to gain power. The Mediterranean Sea has been made into a mega graveyard of migrant and refugee people – not only because of over crowded fragile boats, but also with the deliberate government policy of prohibition and refusal to rescue at sea by European coast guards, but also the policy of blockade undertaken by Frontex, and other forces such as the “Libyan coastguard” – all financed by the EU budget/European taxpayers money – which results in fatal confrontations at sea. Citizen-led humanitarian search and rescue ships (such as SOS Mediterranee) are frequently blocked in their mission, subjected to armed attack and arrest of ships, which also leads to criminalization and court processes. Another trend is the normalization of hate speech, and system crimes against migrant and refugee people, summary detention and deportation and the externalization and securitization of Europe’s border regime to countries in Africa. At the same time, there is ‘policy standardization’ with the preparation for the full obligatory implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum across the EU member states – which has essentially dismantled fundamental human rights and replaced this by repressive ‘management’ policies and mechanisms.
In Africa, wars, poverty, and famine force hundreds of thousands of impoverished and marginalized people to migrate. These are our brothers and sisters in sub-Saharan Africa and the African Sahel, who are forced to cross the immense Sahara and sail the Mediterranean Sea in death boats in an attempt to reach Europe, fleeing their painful and terrifying reality and seeking livelihood and a better life.
In Asia, we also see more than a million forcibly displaced Rohingya
people fleeing persecution and military repression in Myanmar, who have crossed the border to Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries as Thailand. Most recently, the military confrontations on the Thai-Cambodia border is leading to further forced displacements. At the same time migrant workers women and men, especially from Philippines and Indonesia, are providing a vital labor force in other South East and East Asian economies – frequently in conditions of precarity of contracts and violation of labor and fundamental human rights. Similarly, many thousands of women and men workers from South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal are particularly concentrated in the Gulf States.
In the Arabian Gulf, similar conditions of exploitation prevail, and in addition migrants remain subject to the slave-like sponsorship (Kafala ) system and all forms of slavery and mistreatment against domestic workers and laborers.
Global Restructuring of Labor
Under the conditions of neoliberal globalization, huge sectors of manufacturing and production were moved from the Global North to establish supply chains that took advantage of cheaper labor in the countries of the Global South. At the same time very essential sectors of the economy could not be “outsourced “ to the global south – agriculture, domestic, health and care work, tourism services, oil- rig work and construction work. Therefore these sectors relied heavily on migrant labour from the global south.
Many peasants and rural workers were forced to leave their villages due to land grabbing by mega Agribusiness companies and pesticide driven model of agriculture that destroys the livelihoods of farmers and serves only the profits of the large corporations. Many are also forced to work in agriculture, either in transit countries or in destination countries, in precarious conditions and without social protection. They are exposed to labor accidents and to the use of chemicals and pesticides, without any protection.
While remittances have long helped prop up the economies of labor-sending countries like the Philippines, this reality comes at a steep and often ignored social cost. Large-scale labor migration has meant brain drain, the weakening of essential public services, and deep social wounds borne by workers’ families and communities. Migrant labor should never be treated as an economic crutch or a development strategy. Decent jobs at home—not forced migration—must remain the goal.
Likewise, during the past decades, the economies of the global north, have also relied on migrant workers for domestic, care and health services and for work in the tourist economy. However the living and working conditions are extremely exploitative and workplaces are frequently “sites without rights “ – including deliberative policies where many thousands of migrants are forced to become “undocumented”.
Migrant movements organize and build resistance
Migrant workers historically and currently are playing a major role in the economies of the global north, while at the same time contributing substantially through their remittances to the economies of their home countries in the global south – a source of foreign currency often earmarked to pay the foreign debt.
In the face of all the challenges they encounter globally as outlined above, migrant and refugee people continue to organize, protest, and resist this oppression.
Migrant and immigrant organizations and those movements and organizations in engaged solidarity – continue to raise the banner of struggle and resistance and system change and concluded the December 13th exchange resolved to:
- pursue the campaign for regularization for all !
- generate a new narrative – shifting the discourse while building on the achievements and contributions of migrant and refugee people – politically, economically and culturally
- recall and affirm that the history of humanity is a history of migration par excellence, that the most powerful and advanced countries in the world were built by migrants, that migration is a fundamental human right, and that it is a movement of resistance against injustice, exploitation, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism
- continue to build the Pact of Solidarity as our collective response and commitment to system change for a world of justice and peace for all!
To Migrate is a fundamental human right and a movement of resistance and should not be criminalized.
Borders should not be death zones
Dignity should not be negotiable
Down with all borders!
Long live the International Migrants Day !
For more information see:
The Global Pact of Solidarity with migrants and refugees
The Kandy Declaration
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