Intervention at Second International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) at UN Headquarters in New York, 2026
We wrote this brief note last week from the Second International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) at UN Headquarters in New York where we spent the week at the center of conversations on the Global Compact for Migration.
In the anniversary week of launching FemSMS on 5th May 2022 — an ecosystem and intervention that continues to reach more than 12,000 people each week because of you — we had the rare privilege of delivering an intervention on the floor of the UN’s Interactive Multi‑Stakeholder Hearing that precedes the IMRF. Our message, delivered by Dr. Eglinton, Footage Executive Director and co-founder was about humanizing migrants: insisting on compassion, dignity, and participatory feminist methods in how we understand and respond to migration.
Conference Room 4, United Nations Headquarters, New York
4 May 2026
Prepared remarks (shortened as delivered; minor edits in the shared video version).
Thank you, it is a privilege to speak here today. My name is Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton, and Footage is a feminist research and action organization that has worked for close to 20 years with migrant and displaced communities and gender-based violence around the globe in human rights contexts.
We aim to move from dehumanizing narratives of migration to humanizing ones that recognize people's worthiness, dignity and compassion. Too often, migrants are described as "flows" or "risks," not as people with relationships, hopes, emotions, worthiness – we know dehumanization is a tool to justify gender-based violence, exploitation, and neglect.
We also know migration is intersectional, and that women and girls, and LGBTQI+ people, face specific risks, including gender‑based violence and trafficking, especially in conflict and crisis settings – for example in Ukraine.
At Footage, we work with migrant and displaced women, in all their diversity, and LGBTQIA+ communities as co-designers, and see community and compassion as central to policy — recognizing each other's suffering and worth, and acting on that recognition in how we find solutions and make decisions.
One example is our FemSMS project focusing on information poverty and mental health, co-led and co-designed by Ukrainian women, in all their diversity, queer communities, and feminist activists including those displaced in Europe and internally displaced inside Ukraine. FemSMS is now being adapted with migrant communities including LGBTQIA+ people in exile from authoritarian contexts in New York City, folks who live with a double precarity — targeted at home, and still unsafe and marginalized when they arrive in a place where they hope for sanctuary.
Through this feminist research intervention we have created participatory, trauma-informed tools — including our mobile messaging service and story-based circles — so people, as co-researchers are uplifted as leaders, and vital community members, and they can put their experience of violence, exploitation and discrimination, and what they actually need, at the center of our action.
From this experience, we offer three recommendations for implementing the Global Compact on Migration, especially objectives 7, 16 and 17, we realize this is not new, but we will keep saying it until wider actions truly match these words – no more lip service.
First: integrate intersectional, compassion‑led, participatory methods into the design and monitoring of migration policies: include the voices of those most affected. From the very beginning as part of the DNA, those we serve must be co‑researchers, co‑designers and compassionate leaders.
Second: invest in migrant-led compassionate narrative work. Using the science of narrative and compassion we can directly address vulnerabilities and discriminatory discourse and build the social connection that makes exploitation harder to sustain.
Third: evidence and data: pair quantitative indicators with qualitative, participatory evidence — stories and feminist ethnographic findings — ensuring humanization remains central to the monitoring of the compact.
We call on member states to embed participatory, trauma-informed, compassionate methods in their implementation of the Compact — and most of all I urge you — having been on the ground for over 2 decades — to invest in and uplift the migrant-led and civil society organizations doing this work.
Thank you.
In the anniversary week of launching FemSMS on 5th May 2022 — an ecosystem and intervention that continues to reach more than 12,000 people each week because of you — we had the rare privilege of delivering an intervention on the floor of the UN’s Interactive Multi‑Stakeholder Hearing that precedes the IMRF. Our message, delivered by Dr. Eglinton, Footage Executive Director and co-founder was about humanizing migrants: insisting on compassion, dignity, and participatory feminist methods in how we understand and respond to migration.
Intervention by Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton
Interactive Multi‑Stakeholder Hearing of the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF)Conference Room 4, United Nations Headquarters, New York
4 May 2026
Prepared remarks (shortened as delivered; minor edits in the shared video version).
Thank you, it is a privilege to speak here today. My name is Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton, and Footage is a feminist research and action organization that has worked for close to 20 years with migrant and displaced communities and gender-based violence around the globe in human rights contexts.
We aim to move from dehumanizing narratives of migration to humanizing ones that recognize people's worthiness, dignity and compassion. Too often, migrants are described as "flows" or "risks," not as people with relationships, hopes, emotions, worthiness – we know dehumanization is a tool to justify gender-based violence, exploitation, and neglect.
We also know migration is intersectional, and that women and girls, and LGBTQI+ people, face specific risks, including gender‑based violence and trafficking, especially in conflict and crisis settings – for example in Ukraine.
At Footage, we work with migrant and displaced women, in all their diversity, and LGBTQIA+ communities as co-designers, and see community and compassion as central to policy — recognizing each other's suffering and worth, and acting on that recognition in how we find solutions and make decisions.
One example is our FemSMS project focusing on information poverty and mental health, co-led and co-designed by Ukrainian women, in all their diversity, queer communities, and feminist activists including those displaced in Europe and internally displaced inside Ukraine. FemSMS is now being adapted with migrant communities including LGBTQIA+ people in exile from authoritarian contexts in New York City, folks who live with a double precarity — targeted at home, and still unsafe and marginalized when they arrive in a place where they hope for sanctuary.
Through this feminist research intervention we have created participatory, trauma-informed tools — including our mobile messaging service and story-based circles — so people, as co-researchers are uplifted as leaders, and vital community members, and they can put their experience of violence, exploitation and discrimination, and what they actually need, at the center of our action.
From this experience, we offer three recommendations for implementing the Global Compact on Migration, especially objectives 7, 16 and 17, we realize this is not new, but we will keep saying it until wider actions truly match these words – no more lip service.
First: integrate intersectional, compassion‑led, participatory methods into the design and monitoring of migration policies: include the voices of those most affected. From the very beginning as part of the DNA, those we serve must be co‑researchers, co‑designers and compassionate leaders.
Second: invest in migrant-led compassionate narrative work. Using the science of narrative and compassion we can directly address vulnerabilities and discriminatory discourse and build the social connection that makes exploitation harder to sustain.
Third: evidence and data: pair quantitative indicators with qualitative, participatory evidence — stories and feminist ethnographic findings — ensuring humanization remains central to the monitoring of the compact.
We call on member states to embed participatory, trauma-informed, compassionate methods in their implementation of the Compact — and most of all I urge you — having been on the ground for over 2 decades — to invest in and uplift the migrant-led and civil society organizations doing this work.
Thank you.
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