Migration governance is often discussed as a policy issue to be negotiated and managed. But its consequences are lived in much more immediate ways: whether a child is kept out of detention and with their family; whether a woman who has fled violence can access safety, services and protection; whether people crossing borders are treated as rights-holders, rather than risks to be managed.
That is why the 2026 International Migration Review Forum is fundamental to International Detention Coalition (IDC) and our partners advocating for migrant rights around the world. It is an opportunity to influence the global commitments, accountability mechanisms, changes at national levels and implementation pathways that shape how governments respond to migrants in practice.
IDC participated with clear strategic objectives: to secure concrete policy and practice change at national, regional or international levels that could have an actual impact on the lives of migrants.
As a result, IDC helped secure important advances on the mission to end child immigration detention, strengthening alternatives to detention, advancing gender-responsive migration governance and preventing backsliding, and embedding rights-based safeguards on digital technologies in migration systems.
For IDC, the IMRF – held between 4th and 8th May in New York City – represented the culmination of around nine months of sustained advocacy, targeted engagement and relationship-building with governments, UN agencies, civil society and regional actors.
IDC’s strategy focused on advancing rights-based migration governance, particularly around alternatives to detention (ATD), ending child immigration detention, safeguarding gender-responsive migration policies and non-regression on this topic, and ensuring that emerging approaches to migration governance – including the use of digital technologies and the concept of the route-based approach – follow a rights-based approach.
IDC adopted a two-pronged approach, focusing on engagement with States and other relevant actors on the content of the Progress Declaration, and supporting key national governments and regional bodies with the development of pledges, mainly related to objective 13 of the GCM and to our key priorities.
Throughout the IMRF process, IDC worked to ensure that the Progress Declaration reflected practical commitments rather than broad political rhetoric. This work started with long-term advocacy and relationship building in capitals, Geneva and New York, and evolved through continuous engagement with States and stakeholders, demonstrating a long-term advocacy strategy rather than ad hoc participation.
One of IDC’s most significant achievements, in partnership with colleagues from UNICEF and the Migration Youth and Children Platform (MYCP), was influencing the language of the Progress Declaration, particularly related to ending child immigration detention and strengthening references to alternatives to detention.
The final declaration separated ATD language from broader border management approaches, an important distinction for IDC’s advocacy. Even more significantly, paragraph 53 requests the UN Secretary-General to assess progress and challenges, and develop practical recommendations on ending child immigration detention and child-sensitive alternatives to detention in the context of migration. IDC considers this provision a major advocacy win because it creates an ongoing international accountability mechanism for concrete policy follow-up.
For children and families, follow-up on paragraph 53 can support practical shifts away from immigration detention and towards community-based alternatives that protect family unity, education, mental health and children’s rights. This work needs to continue until no child is detained for immigration-related reasons.
IDC and partners from Women in Migration Network, FeMig, UN Women, OHCHR and DESA under Roundtable 4 of the UN Migration Network also successfully defended and advanced gender-responsive migration governance language throughout the negotiations. At a time when migrants’ rights and women’s rights are under threat and when gender-related commitments are increasingly backsliding in multilateral spaces, IDC and our partners helped prevent regression and secured strong language reaffirming meaningful participation of women in migration governance and protection against all forms of violence against migrant women and girls.
IDC and our partners also helped set up the IMRF Informal Gender Network with membership from key States, helping coordinate advocacy and maintain political momentum around gender responsiveness in the IMRF.
In practical terms, this work will help migration policies better reflect the risks faced by migrant women, girls and gender-diverse people, including violence, exploitation, family separation, pregnancy-related needs, care responsibilities, trafficking risks and barriers to healthcare, justice and documentation.
Another important outcome was the inclusion of rights-based safeguards on the use of digital technologies in migration governance, working closely with OHCHR. This was particularly important for IDC given the growing use of surveillance technologies and other digital tools within detention, ATD and border governance contexts. Clear safeguards will help to ensure that these tools do not deepen discrimination, expand surveillance and make harmful decisions that seriously affect the rights of migrants.
IDC identifies limitations in the final IMRF outcome document, but we also recognise that this is a political process and that balanced language needs to be reached – we congratulate the co-facilitators for achieving some of this balance.
Another central component of IDC’s advocacy was to leverage long-term relationship building to secure concrete pledges from governments and regional bodies. IDC and our partners supported the development of key pledges and supported governments to translate policy priorities into implementable commitments that can have an actual impact on the lives of migrants. Examples include a pledge from the Government of Malawi, outlining clear steps towards ending child immigration detention with a clear timeline, and another from the Regional Conference on Migration in the Americas about piloting the Vulnerability Screening Tool, which will prevent the detention of people in vulnerable situations at borders.
IDC was also very active at the IMRF and participated in 12 side events, directly co-organising seven of them on detention, gender and digital technology, and speaking as part of the others. See list here. We also contributed substantively to shaping broader policy debates during the IMRF week. IDC’s active presence across the IMRF helped ensure that discussions on detention, children’s rights, gender, technology and routes remained connected to the realities faced by migrants in practice.
During Roundtable 2, IDC highlighted the increasing politicisation and criminalisation of migration globally and reiterated that child immigration detention is never in the best interests of the child and constitutes a form of violence against children. We also provided feedback from a Roundtable IDC co-organised with UNICEF, UNHCR, IOM, MYCP and the SRSG on Violence against Children with member states that are taking steps towards ending child immigration detention and promoting alternatives, showcasing that it is possible to achieve this goal and that some states are doing it. IDC also participated as a speaker in the Multistakeholder hearing held on 4th May.
IDC also addressed both the opportunities and risks of the emerging “route-based approach” during the IMRF Policy Debate, explaining how the route-based approach is important to increase cooperation, and could be used to strengthen asylum systems, expand regular pathways, promote casework and support access to services for migrants.
However, it cannot become a tool for border externalisation or for prioritising an agenda focused mainly on returns.
Part of IDC’s work at the IMRF was as a consortium partner of the Pathways to Protection project. P2P is a five-year programme focused on strengthening the protection and rights of people moving along the Mediterranean migration routes, where risks can change quickly from one country to the next. Its purpose is to make sure people can access support and information before, during and after migration journeys, and that their rights are protected, wherever they are along the route. The programme is led by the Danish Refugee Council, the Danish Red Cross and International Detention Coalition, with financial support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
IDC’s engagement in the IMRF demonstrates that sustained, strategic and grounded advocacy can influence multilateral outcomes beyond the negotiating room. By combining long-term relationship-building, practical support and targeted advocacy – and by working with others, including governments – IDC was able to leverage a global advocacy space into a mechanism for impacting international, regional and national processes. The task now is to ensure these commitments are implemented in law, policy and practice, so they lead to real change for children, families, women and all people affected by immigration detention and migration enforcement.
