MMC’s Annual Report 2025 provides an overview of all our publications and media engagement in 2025 and examines how MMC’s work is accessed, used, how it increases knowledge and how it is ultimately influencing policy and programming.
The report includes a foreword by MMC’s director on MMC’s development in 2025 and progress toward its intended outcomes and objectives, as well as selected case studies highlighting key achievements for each of MMC’s regional teams.
A significant contribution in 2025 was MMC’s work on human smuggling. Our global study How Smuggling Really Works – drawing on over 80,000 refugee and migrant interviews and hundreds of interviews with smugglers – was released at a strategically crucial time ahead of the EU’s Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling. We also delivered regional smuggling analysis on movements through Yemen, along the Eastern Route, and routes to Europe along the Central Mediterranean, Atlantic, Western Mediterranean and UK Channel. This breadth of work added critical nuance to understanding smuggling practices, challenges persistent misconceptions and informed evidence-based policy discussions.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, we expanded monitoring of migration dynamics along the Eastern Route to and through Yemen where our data was used by media reporting on large-scale shipwrecks on this route. We also broadened our data collection along southern migration routes and expanded our thematic focus to include the experiences of LGBTQI+ migrants and refugees.
In West and North Africa, we analysed key migration routes and protection risks including through Lives in Transit: Migration Routes in West Africa, which shed light on the experiences of children and caregivers on the move. We also facilitated discussion on the implications of European migration policies on protection and smuggling dynamics, provoking reflection among government and non-government stakeholders.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, we continued documenting one of the world’s most dynamic migration corridors. Our research on migrant and refugee women – through the report Migrant Women in Transit Across South America – highlighted important gender dynamics and fed into policy dialogue at the Global Forum on Migration and Development. The region also developed an innovative AI-based Chatbot to provide information for people on the move.
Across Asia, MMC deepened research into Afghan returns, movements through Türkiye, and the situation of Afghan children in Pakistan. A joint study with the Bali Process Regional Support Office – Community perceptions & information needs of persons at risk of irregular migration – informed member State’s discussions underscoring the importance of communityled information and economic opportunities in mitigating irregular migration risks.
In the Middle East, we strengthened work on climate mobility with case studies in Yemen, Syria and Iraq and for the first time conducted in-country data collection in Saudi Arabia on the climate-labour-mobility nexus. We also set up data collection in Syria with returning refugees, migrants and IDPs.
