The year 2021 gave us many reasons for hope. With diagnostic, therapeutic and immunization advances, science offered solutions to kickstart recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effects. In most of the world, human mobility – which had been severely limited since early 2020 – started resuming, cautiously, thanks to various mitigation tools, such as testing, vaccination, and health passes, that made it possible to align international travel with public health imperatives. Most importantly, we witnessed a genuine desire to make COVID19-related health services more accessible and inclusive. However, despite several positive developments, profound inequalities and discrimination have persisted. While the public health emergency slowed down many activities, including regular migration, it did not put an end to conflict, disaster, humanitarian need or forced displacement. According to the latest World Migration Report, the current global estimate is that there were around 281 million international migrants in the world in 2020, which equates to 3.6 per cent of the global population.