Displaced Twice: When Climate Migration Meets Queer Exclusion
About the session
Climate displacement is not experienced equally.
When people move because livelihoods have collapsed, homes have become unsafe, disasters have struck, or environmental pressures have compounded existing instability, the ability to start again depends enormously on what surrounds them.
Family. Legal status. Money. Documentation. Community. Safety. Work. Recognition.
For LGBTQI+ people, some of those sources of resilience may not be available at all.
A queer person displaced from their home may not be able to fall back on a family or community that rejects their identity.
Someone crossing a border may enter an asylum or migration system poorly equipped to recognize the particular risks LGBTQI+ people face. In a receiving community, race, immigration status, sexuality, gender identity, and economic insecurity can interact in ways that make finding safe housing, employment, healthcare, and community considerably harder.
Yet climate, migration, LGBTQI+ rights, and economic equity are still frequently treated as separate fields.
That separation matters.
A climate adaptation program can talk about vulnerable communities without LGBTQI+ people being part of its design.
A migration system can offer protection while failing to account for the circumstances queer people are fleeing or the risks they encounter after displacement.
A gender conversation can claim an intersectional approach without queer voices holding meaningful power within it.
And funders can celebrate LGBTQI+ communities during moments of heightened visibility while grassroots organizations struggle to secure the sustained resources required to build institutions that last.
The problem is not simply whether queer communities are included. It is whether their leadership changes what gets built.
Across different regions, LGBTQI+-led organizations are already creating peer-support networks, community safety mechanisms, legal advocacy, economic solidarity, and other forms of infrastructure their communities rely on.
They understand intersections that institutions organized into separate climate, migration, development, and human-rights portfolios can struggle to see.
So what would happen if those organizations were treated not as groups to consult, but as leaders whose knowledge should shape policy, programs, and funding?
What gaps in displacement and migration systems become visible?
What does climate resilience look like when chosen family, community safety, legal recognition, and economic inclusion are understood as part of resilience?
And what would funders have to change if the goal were to build durable LGBTQI+-led institutions rather than periodically fund LGBTQI+ inclusion?
Discussion Group Leaders
Kent Klindera is Chief Philanthropy Officer at UHAI EASHRI USA, mobilizing philanthropic support to advance health, human rights, and sustainable community-led organizations.
Melissa Pierce is Senior Officer - Foundations at Rainbow Railroad, mobilizing institutional partnerships and philanthropic support to protect LGBTQI+ people facing persecution and forced displacement.
Melodie KG is Co-Director at New Moon Network, advancing funding and capacity building for the sex workers’ rights movement in the United States.
Sophie Wanyenze is Executive Director at Global Alliance for Queer Leaders (GAQL), advancing LGBTQ+ leadership, human rights, and community empowerment through partnerships, advocacy, and collective action.
Tyler Nelson is Founding Convener at Waypoint Commons, building shared standards, evidence, and funding pathways that help LGBTIQ+ organizations operate safely and sustainably.
What to expect
A candid conversation grounded in the lived experience and organizational leadership of LGBTQI+ practitioners working across climate justice, migration, human rights, and economic equity.
Participants will examine where existing systems can fail queer immigrants and displaced people, while learning from community-led organizations already building alternatives.
This is not primarily a conversation about what institutions should do for LGBTQI+ communities.
It is a conversation about what becomes possible when LGBTQI+ leaders have the resources and power to shape the systems themselves.
Who this is for
This session is for LGBTQI+ rights advocates and practitioners, climate justice and migration professionals, funders supporting LGBTQI+ and human-rights movements, development organizations working on inclusion, refugee and displacement practitioners, economic equity organizations, and people trying to translate intersectionality from a principle into the way decisions, programs, and funding actually work.
What you will get out of it
A more nuanced understanding of how climate pressures, displacement, race, immigration status, sexuality, gender identity, and economic exclusion can intersect
Perspectives from LGBTQI+-led organizations on the community infrastructure they are already building and what sustainable support for that work requires
Practical questions for examining where migration and displacement systems may fail LGBTQI+ people
A framework for moving from including LGBTQI+ communities in existing programs toward giving LGBTQI+ leaders meaningful influence over their design
A conversation about what long-term funding for LGBTQI+-led movements could look like beyond short grant cycles and moments of heightened visibility
Connections among practitioners working across climate justice, migration, human rights, philanthropy, and economic equity who rarely have the opportunity to approach these challenges together