Introduction

The scale of global migration, defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the movement of people from one area to another for varying periods of time,[1] is vast and growing. The International Organization for Migration has estimated that 192 million people globally, or 3 percent of the world’s population, live outside of their country of birth.[2] Worldwide, even more people migrate within their country than out of it.[3] According to the WHO, migration can often have serious health consequences for migrants because of challenges involving “discrimination, language and cultural barriers, legal status and other economic and social difficulties.”[4]Indeed, the global financial crisis has particularly thrown into relief the plight of migrants as it has exacerbated health and social inequalities.[5]

Since the emergence of the HIV epidemic, migrant populations have received considerable recognition from the international community in the context of risk, spread, and prevention of HIV/AIDS.[6] However, despite the long recognition of migration’s relationship to HIV vulnerability, states have largely failed to ensure that internal and international migrants have access to HIV treatment. Instead, many states have implemented discriminatory laws and policies that restrict the entry, stay or residence of persons living with HIV (PLHIV) and serve to limit the access of internal and international migrants to treatment services within the state. Furthermore, in many countries migrants are deported without adequate consideration of the availability of HIV treatment in the country of origin and without sufficient provision for continuity of care.

Given the global scale and frequency of migration worldwide, a rational public health strategy toward HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment cannot include any form of discrimination against migrants.  Denying treatment to migrants will only serve to perpetuate transmission and frustrate efforts toward controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Interruptions in HIV treatment occasioned by restrictions on entry, stay, or residence in a state, limits on movement within a state, barriers to access, or deportation can lead to illness, development of drug resistance, and death.[7] 

This document provides a brief overview of some of the human rights challenges that HIV-positive migrants face and related public health consequences at every stage of the migration process, from restrictions on entry, stay, and residence, to official and unofficial barriers to accessing prevention and treatment services, to deportation and lack of continuity of treatment upon return to the country of origin. Despite recognition of the links between HIV and mobility and periodic pledges to deliver care, millions of migrants fail to obtain or maintain access to the HIV treatment they need and risk needless illness, drug resistance, and premature death. Only with concerted global effort on the part of states, international agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and donors, will human rights violations against HIV-positive individuals be eliminated and migrants’ rights to health be fully realized.