A first-of-its-kind global forum
Migration systems can be disabling. They don't have to be.
The Global Forum on Disability, Migration and Forced Displacement brings together migration and refugee duty bearers with the people those systems exclude — convened and led by organisations of persons with disabilities.
Register your interestAbout the forum
The first global forum on disability-responsive migration and refugee governance
Migrants and refugees with disabilities remain marginalised within mainstream migration and refugee governance. The intersection of disability and migration is insufficiently understood and inadequately addressed across policy, programming and global review processes.
People with disabilities face compounding barriers: legal status, the medicalisation and stigmatisation of disability, and access to regular pathways, decent work, essential services, protection and justice. These are structural barriers, not individual misfortunes — and without disability-responsive approaches to how disability is conceptualised and legislated for, they will deepen.
A newly formed transnational consortium of four disability-led and disability-focused migration networks — spanning Asia, Africa and Europe — is convening this forum to advance evidence, social dialogue and practical solutions that support CRPD-aligned implementation of the Global Compact for Migration, the Global Compact on Refugees, International Labour Standards and refugee-related initiatives.
Why now
A gap between commitment and lived reality
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees both draw on international human rights law — including the CRPD, the Migrant Workers Convention, International Labour Standards, and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Yet disability remains inconsistently integrated and routinely deprioritised across governance frameworks and operational practice.
Too often, disability is treated as a category of individual vulnerability rather than a crosscutting governance issue requiring structural reform. Coordination between migration and refugee actors stays fragmented. Disability-disaggregated data is inadequate, which weakens both evidence-informed policy and accountability in review processes.
For refugees, the journey itself can be disabling. Exposure to violence, detention, trafficking, interrupted healthcare and precarious living conditions produces new physical and psychosocial disabilities — a dynamic that refugee systems rarely recognise.
Figures drawn from ILO (2026) and consortium research. The overlap between these populations is substantial, yet remains under-recognised in policy design, data systems and global review processes.
The timing is deliberate. The twentieth anniversary of the CRPD converges with the International Migration Review Forum in May 2026, the subsequent Global Refugee Forum cycle, and the annual International Labour Conference. That convergence is a strategic window to move from recognition to implementation.
Objectives
Four interlinked aims
Central to the forum is addressing how disability discrimination and ableism become embedded in migration and asylum laws, procedures and institutions — and identifying the practical reforms that remove them.
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Strengthen normative coherence
Between the CRPD, the Global Compact for Migration, the Global Compact on Refugees, International Labour Standards and refugee-related initiatives.
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Make the disabling impact visible
Support migration and refugee duty bearers to identify and address the disabling effects of existing policies, procedures and service delivery.
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Back OPD leadership
Support the meaningful participation of organisations of persons with disabilities — including those led by migrants and refugees with disabilities — in governance.
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Generate actionable measures
Produce disability-responsive recommendations that inform future global review processes, including the IMRF and the Global Refugee Forum.
Agenda
Five sessions across two days
Every session opens with recorded testimony from migrants and refugees with disabilities, then moves to expert panels and open discussion. Interpretation, International Sign and live captioning run throughout.
Day 1 Wednesday, 23 September 2026
08:00–10:00 Session 1 · Historical overview of disability and migration
Situating today's challenges in their historical and legal context. The session examines freedom of movement, displacement and refugee protection through the social and human rights models of disability, and traces how a legacy of discrimination shaped the frameworks still in use.
Moderated by Catalina Devandas Aguilar
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 08:00–08:07 | Housekeeping and welcome from the moderator |
| 08:07–08:14 | Opening remarks |
| 08:14–08:17 | Testimony — refugee (video) |
| 08:17–08:20 | Testimony — migrant worker (video) |
| 08:20–08:30 | Scene setting: disability and the historical landscape |
| 08:30–08:50 | Disability and the CRPD Amalia Gamio · CRPD Committee |
| 08:50–08:55 | Comfort break |
| 08:55–09:15 | Refugee governance |
| 09:15–09:35 | Migration governance Kaat Landuyt · ILO |
| 09:35–10:00 | Q&A and discussion |
10:00–10:30 Halfway break
10:30–12:30 Session 2 · Labour migration governance and disability in practice
Evidence on the barriers migrant workers with disabilities face across recruitment, regularisation, employment, occupational safety and health, access to justice and social protection — drawing on cases from ASEAN, Australia, South Korea and Europe.
Moderated by Rebecca Napier-Moore, ILO
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 10:30–10:39 | Housekeeping and welcome from the moderator |
| 10:39–10:42 | Testimony — migrant worker (video) |
| 10:42–10:45 | Testimony — migrant worker (video) |
| 10:45–11:05 | Disability dimensions of labour migration in ASEAN Ben Thatcher · DMN |
| 11:05–11:25 | The Standing Committee on Migration Inquiry, Australia |
| 11:25–11:30 | Comfort break |
| 11:30–11:50 | Access to justice in South Korea Jueon Lee · Duroo |
| 11:50–12:10 | A view from Europe |
| 12:10–12:30 | Q&A and discussion |
Day 2 Thursday, 24 September 2026
08:00–09:30 Session 3 · Capacity building of OPDs
Practical training for organisations of persons with disabilities, including migrant- and refugee-led organisations, on engaging with migration and refugee governance structures — advocacy strategy, policy engagement, and participation in global review and follow-up processes.
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 08:00–08:05 | Housekeeping and welcome from the moderator |
| 08:05–08:14 | Keynote |
| 08:14–08:17 | Testimony — migrant worker (video) |
| 08:17–08:20 | Testimony — refugee (video) |
| 08:20–08:35 | OPDs and migrant resource centres Monika · CDPO |
| 08:35–08:50 | Building network capacity Julius Ntobuah · GNRD |
| 08:50–08:55 | Comfort break |
| 08:55–09:10 | A view from South America |
| 09:10–09:30 | Q&A and discussion |
09:30–10:00 Break
10:00–11:30 Session 4 · Disability in refugee camps in the Global South
Camp governance, access to services and participation, told first by refugees with disabilities from Africa and the Middle East and then examined through humanitarian programming, protection and localisation.
Moderated by Julius Ntobuah, GNRD
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 10:00–10:07 | Housekeeping and welcome from the moderator |
| 10:07–10:10 | Testimony — refugee (video) |
| 10:10–10:20 | Living in a refugee camp: a speaker from Africa on services and participation |
| 10:20–10:30 | Displacement and camp governance: a speaker from the Middle East on resilience and leadership |
| 10:30–10:45 | Persons with albinism on the move Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond · UN Independent Expert |
| 10:45–10:50 | Comfort break |
| 10:50–11:15 | Disability-inclusive humanitarian programming, and refugee governance, participation and localisation |
| 11:15–11:30 | Q&A and call to action |
11:30–12:00 Break
12:00–13:30 Session 5 · The disabling immigration system in the Global North
How border regimes, procedures and institutional arrangements disable the people moving through them — both those already disabled when the journey begins and those the system disables along the way.
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 12:00–12:09 | Housekeeping and welcome from the moderator |
| 12:09–12:12 | Testimony — refugee (video) |
| 12:12–12:15 | Testimony — refugee (video) |
| 12:15–12:30 | Speaker 1 |
| 12:30–12:45 | Speaker 2 |
| 12:45–12:50 | Comfort break |
| 12:50–13:05 | Speaker 3 |
| 13:05–13:30 | Q&A and discussion |
Format
- Fully online across two mornings, Central European Time
- Sessions of 90 to 120 minutes, with comfort breaks throughout
- Recorded testimony from migrants and refugees with disabilities opens every session
- Programme still being finalised — some speakers to be announced
Who attends
- Migration and refugee duty bearers, UN agencies and government representatives
- Employers' and workers' organisations
- Researchers, policy experts and donors
- OPDs, civil society, and migrants and refugees with disabilities
Speakers and moderators
Who you'll hear from
Treaty body members, UN mandate holders, ILO specialists, public interest lawyers and OPD leaders — alongside refugees and migrant workers with disabilities speaking to their own experience. More names are announced as they are confirmed.
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Catalina Devandas Aguilar
IOM
Moderator · Session 1
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Amalia Gamio
CRPD Committee, Mexico
Disability and the CRPD · Session 1
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Kaat Landuyt
ILO · Senior Specialist on Labour Migration
Migration governance · Session 1
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Rebecca Napier-Moore
ILO
Moderator · Session 2
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Ben Thatcher
Disability Migration Network · Co-founder
Labour migration in ASEAN · Session 2
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Jueon Lee
Duroo · Association for Public Interest Law
Access to justice in South Korea · Session 2
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Monika
CDPO
OPDs and migrant resource centres · Session 3
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Julius Ntobuah
Global Network of Refugees with Disabilities
Session 3 speaker · Session 4 moderator
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Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond
UN Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism
Persons with albinism on the move · Session 4
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More to be announced
Speakers for Sessions 1, 2, 3 and 5 are still being confirmed, including refugees and migrant workers with disabilities speaking to their own experience.
Outcomes and outputs
What the forum produces
Outcomes
A stronger shared normative and operational understanding of disability across migration and refugee governance, grounded in the CRPD and tied directly to implementation of the GCM, GCR and ILS.
Migration and refugee actors better equipped to identify and address structural barriers, discrimination and ableism — and to apply disability-responsive approaches across migration, asylum and protection frameworks.
Strengthened leadership of migrants and refugees with disabilities, and of OPDs, at global, regional and national levels.
Outputs
- Actionable, practice-oriented recommendations supporting CRPD-aligned implementation
- Documented examples of good practice for migration and refugee actors
- Strengthened OPD capacity and preparedness for future global review processes
- A post-forum summary report and dissemination package for donors, partners and stakeholders
The consortium
Four networks. Three regions. One agenda.
This will be the first global event on disability in migration and refugee governance designed, convened and led by OPDs — including networks representing migrants and refugees with disabilities themselves. Lived experience is not consultative here; it sets the agenda.
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Global Network of Refugees with Disabilities
GNRD · Focal point: Julius Ntobuah
Empowers refugee-led organisations to access advocacy opportunities at national, regional and global levels and to raise funds for their initiatives, amplifying their voices in global policy and humanitarian response.
gnrd.ngo -
Korean Disability Forum
KDF · Focal point: Hanbyol Choi
An umbrella organisation of 18 national disabled people's organisations. KDF monitors national implementation of UN human rights treaties, in particular the CRPD, and bridges DPOs across borders.
thekdf.org -
Disability Migration Network
DMN · Focal points: Dr. Jun Bernandino, Karla Henson, Ben Thatcher
An OPD-led network advancing disability-responsive migration in policy and practice, focused on the right to freedom of movement for persons with disabilities.
disabilitymigrationnetwork.com -
Disability and Migration Network
DAMN · Focal point: Rebecca Yeo
Works from the principle that immigration restrictions and inequalities are disabling and racist, and that a social model approach can build solidarity and resistance toward systemic change.
disability-migration.org.uk
Accessibility
Participation is the point
A forum about disabling systems cannot itself be one. Access provisions are built into the forum's design and budget from the start, not added on request.
At the forum
- Interpretation from English into French, Spanish, Swahili, Korean, Lao, Myanmar and Khmer
- International Sign interpretation with rotating interpreters
- Professional live captioning across all sessions
- Accessible online hosting with technical support
On this site
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