Adam Jones, legal lead on JCWI’s ‘Climate Justice is Migrant Justice’ Project, Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah, JCWI’s Communications Director, and veteran journalist and JCWI trustee Simon Israel joined leading lawyers and activists at the Leigh Day Immigration Summit 2025 to tackle the urgent issues shaping migration and human rights.
Simon opened the summit with a powerful keynote, highlighting the deepening human rights challenges faced by those working with displaced communities in an era of political hostility and environmental crisis.
Ravishaan joined a panel exploring how anti-migrant discourse helped fuel recent UK unrest – and the danger of its resurgence. He was joined by long-time human rights advocates Lee Jasper and Frances Webber, with the panel chaired by Frances Swaine, consultant solicitor in Leigh Day’s Windrush, Immigration and Asylum team.
Looking to the future, the panellists discussed the complex realities of grassroots organising in a polarised climate, including the tension between broadening support and staying true to radical values.
There’s real hope in what we’re seeing, especially among young people using platforms like TikTok to engage with progressive politics. To push back against far-right narratives, we have to be nimble, bold, and clear - using technology to amplify our message with purpose.
Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah, Communications Director at JCWI
Adam Jones chaired a panel on the urgent need to establish legal frameworks for climate justice. Panellists shared bold, collaborative strategies – from building an open-source database of climate-related cases, to leveraging decisions in regional courts like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to create legal momentum at the global level. The panel included Dr David Ngira (Amnesty International), Geoffrey Mboya (Kenyan youth advocate), Emily Rowe (Refugee Legal Support), Yumna Kamel (Earth Refuge), and climate litigation specialist Harj Narulla.
Amid urgent and overlapping threats – climate collapse, displacement, and resurgent xenophobia – the event offered a moment of real hope, as lawyers and activists came together to chart a path forward.
