Mercy Global Action (MGA) is the international justice arm of Mercy International Association. Through Mercy Global Action, we are able to expand our advocacy capacity and re-imagine ways in which the grassroots experience can influence global policies. With Mercy contacts on the ground, Mercy Global Action is able to exchange knowledge, identify best practices, and bring the two chief areas of concern to our justice work, including at the United Nations.

Mercy International Association (MIA) was founded in 1992 by the leaders of Sisters of Mercy Congregations throughout the world. Sisters of Mercy is an international faith-based organization founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1831, with members in 47 countries and territories worldwide, and committed to serving those who suffer from poverty and other forms of disadvantage, especially women and children, empowering them to live full and dignified lives within diverse social and cultural contexts.”

Since 1998 the Sisters of Mercy have enjoyed Special Consultative Status through the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. With ECOSOC accreditation we have certain privileges to place items on the agenda of ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies; we may attend meetings, where we may submit written statements and make oral presentations to governments.

The Sisters of Mercy are also in association with the UN Department of Global Communications and hold observer status in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Purpose and Mission statement of the Mercy UN Mission indicated its “desire to use our collective power as an international network to exercise global responsibility through formal engagement with the United Nations”; its “commitment to contributing our insights and values […] towards building a global community based on justice, compassion, and mutual respect, and living in harmonious relationship with earth”; and its “passion to bring into focus in the international arena the circumstances and rights of those must vulnerable and disadvantaged […] and to work for change through the United Nations system.” In 1999, the office became known as Mercy Global Concern (MGC); since then, it has served as a channel through which all those associated with the Mercy spirit, vision, and mission in the tradition of Catherine McAuley can be effectively connected with the United Nations.

From the beginning of its work at the UN, MIA has focused on social justice and poverty eradication, seeking to shift both local and global political, socioeconomic, ecological, and cultural systems that cause and perpetuate poverty, climate and environmental degradation, inequality, injustice, and conflict. In its early years, MGC established its focus on social development, drafting interventions, engaging with specific Members States on advocacy issues, and participating in organizing around annual meetings at the UN: the Commission on Social Development, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission for Sustainable Development (which concluded in 2012), the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and High-Level Dialogues of ECOSOC.