The International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) 2026 Progress Declaration represents a critical opportunity to address these gaps and strengthen implementation of the GCM.This paper outlines MYCP’s policy priorities and general recommendations to ensure that migration governance is youth-centred, rights-based, and responsive to current global challenges. Strategic Priority: Recognition of Youth as Stakeholders

We, children and young migrants, exist in a world where migration is a lived and urgent reality, shaped both by necessity and by the pursuit of safety, education, dignity, and opportunity. Having mobilized and gathered from across the world, we share our stories, realities, and truths, rooted in a call for action with one clear message: The future is ours to build, together.

Strengthening alignment with the UNCRC requires the development of clearer procedural standards, child-specific accountability mechanisms, and sustained investment in systems that ensure access to services, protection, and justice. Crucially, it also requires recognising children and youth as active participants in migration governance, with the right and capacity to shape the policies and processes that affect their lives. Without such shifts, the gap between commitment and practice will remain, and migrant children will continue to face systemic protection deficits.

The Migration Youth & Children Platform (MYCP) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly & Regular Migration (GCM) Youth Consultations program represents a milestone in the Migration Youth and Children Platform's manifest mission to bridge the gap between youth experiences and international migration policymaking. The program successfully exceeded its initial primary targets, consulting 812 youth on the move across five world regions through 23 consultation sessions, supported by partnerships with 65 organizations. This achievement demonstrates the strong demand for youth participation in migration policy discussions globally.

To further inform the Progress Declaration’s outcome, MYCP is proud to present its advocacy brief for the 2026 IMRF. Grounded in the voices and experiences of young migrants globally, through its GCM Youth Consultation process which were held between 2024-25 in every region of the world and including over 800+ young people, and informed by MYCP’s 2025 Global Youth Report on the State of Migration, this strategy outlines our key policy recommendations to support the implementation of the GCM in line with youth priorities. Each section corresponds to the thematic chapters of MYCP’s Global Youth Report.