International Migrants Day – Call from international solidarity organisations

Call from international solidarity organisations on the occasion of 18 December 2025

Our organisations are calling for people to protest on 18 December, on International Migrants Day. Once again, we are sharing the call from undocumented migrants’ collectives and Marche des Solidarités [1], groups that work daily to combat racism, the repression of people in exile, and for the rights of every person. In the face of escalating rejection, discrimination, and violence against migrants, in disregard of their most fundamental rights, we call for a radical change in approach. There is an urgent need to implement policies based on solidarity, freedom of movement and settlement, and equal rights.

Across the world, new walls are being built, pushbacks and expulsions are on the rise, and the most fundamental rights of people in exile are being violated. Visa restrictions and crackdowns on migration continue to force people in exile to take ever longer and more dangerous routes (across seas, deserts and over mountains) resulting in deaths and disappearances along the way. Last year was the deadliest year for migrants on record [2]. States’ policies of outsourcing border controls remain unpunished despite the associated human rights violations, while the criminalisation of migration and solidarity is a growing global trend [3].

On 2 November 2025, the memorandum of understanding signed in 2017 between Italy and Libya on the ‘fight against illegal immigration’ was automatically renewed for a further three years. Under this memorandum, coordinated by Frontex and financially supported by the European Union, Italy is equipping and training Libyan forces that have been found guilty of crimes against humanity against migrants. The logic of sorting people arriving at the borders of the European Union, particularly institutionalised by the ‘screening’ procedures of the latest European Union Pact on Migration and Asylum, continues, with, for example, the European Commission’s plan to establish a list of ‘safe countries’ to limit access to the right of asylum [4]. In France, the ‘security’ escalation continues, with the government going so far as to call for large-scale operations to carry out security checks and arrest people in precarious administrative situations nationwide, as was the case on the 18^th and 19^th June. These policies are particularly brutal in the United States under Trump’s second administration. The right to asylum is under threat, the scale of checks and crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reached unprecedented levels, and mass deportation campaigns are being carried out.

Despite these policies based on control and refusal, the violence they face along the way and the further hardships they encounter where they try to settle, people in exile continue to assert their right to migrate and their dignity. Families of the disappeared and their allies organise and fight alongside them, through counter-narratives, support networks, and mobilisations. This year (2025) was also an opportunity to remember, ten years on, the ‘summer of migration’ of 2015 [5]; to denounce the increasing harshness of migration policies, to remember those who have disappeared as a result of these policies, but also to celebrate the continuation and diversity of resistance, which is ongoing and evolves daily, along migration routes and within communities.

As 18 December 2025 approaches, we call for stronger solidarity, both local and international, stretching from towns and deserts to cities and seas. We reaffirm our commitment to unconditional welcome and regularisation, equal rights, and the freedom of movement and settlement for all.