Lina Yassin is a Sudanese climate policy researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
As New York Climate Week approaches, excitement is building. It is, after all, a crucial moment to generate momentum toward COP30 and to place climate justice at the centre of the global climate agenda.
Yet this year, many of the voices that most need to be heard, those from countries on the frontlines of the climate crisis, those who carry the greatest moral authority in this struggle, will not even be in the room. Not because they lack the will or the expertise to engage, but because US travel bans and visa barriers have barred their entry.
In June this year, President Trump reinstated and expanded a travel ban. It fully bars citizens from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Another seven countries face partial restrictions. In total, nearly 20 countries now face exclusion from the US, and it is no coincidence that many of them are Least Developed Countries (LDCs). These are the very nations on the frontlines of climate breakdown – countries that should not just be in the room, but leading the conversation.
Conditional place at the table
I will not be in New York this time because my passport is on the wrong list. Unfortunately, for those of us carrying low-mobility passports, this kind of exclusion is nothing new. Our access to global spaces is always conditional. We are only allowed in after proving our worth through endless paperwork, interviews, background checks and layers of suspicion. We are treated as potential risks rather than as contributors.
And even when we do everything asked, access is never guaranteed. The travel ban formalises what we already knew: our place at the table is never secure, always dependent on whether those holding power feel comfortable with us being there.
This year’s ban is not an isolated moment. Earlier in Bonn, at the UN climate negotiations, many developing country delegates were denied visas. Imagine that – people barred from participating in the very forum where they are supposed to defend their countries’ future. This is not just an inconvenience. It is an active silencing of the people most affected by the climate crisis.
And this matters deeply, because climate justice cannot be treated as an isolated bubble. It cannot be reduced to speeches about inclusivity while, in practice, the most vulnerable are excluded. A just response to climate change must start with equal rights at the table. Without that, all the language of “hearing the most vulnerable” and “centering climate justice” means nothing to us.
Climate justice can’t be built on exclusion
Eight years ago, I wrote another op-ed for Climate Home about how Trump’s Muslim Ban at the time meant that I could no longer pursue postgrad studies in the United States. I wrote trying to process what it meant to be told that I was not wanted. Today, eight years later, I am writing again on this theme. The fact that I still have to do this is heartbreaking.
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New York Climate Week will produce reports, headlines and key messages. But it will do so without many of the people whose lived experiences are the most urgent reminder of why climate justice matters.
I hope that the organisers and participants will acknowledge this gap. I hope they will recognise that climate justice cannot be built on exclusion, and that real solidarity means fighting to dismantle the barriers that silence the most vulnerable.
I hope that in a few years, I will not find myself writing these same words for a third time.
