Gracia Violeta Ross of the Bolivian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, held a speech on Mobility, migration and HIV during the Civil Society Hearing at the UNGASS High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS June 10-11, New York. This is what she said:

Good morning.

My name is Violeta, I am from Bolivia.

I thank God and you all for the opportunity to address this audience in this country, despite the fact that I am openly living with HIV for the last 8 years.

While visiting this country, you can trust me not to transmit HIV or to become a burden on the public health budget of this country. This is what every country with travel restrictions must realize. It is wrong and unfair to assume that I or any other person living with HIV will get into your borders with the specific aim to transmit HIV. I am a responsible person and I am here to contribute to the fight against this epidemic, not to spread it, just like all my colleagues living with HIV present at this meeting.

But like me, many people living with HIV are likely to face the prejudice that assumes we are not responsible and with it, we face coercive measures such as mandatory testing, having visas canceled or denied or even being deported from the countries we visit. This is an outrage in 2008 with all we know about HIV.

 Desplazamiento, Migración y VIH/SIDA 54.98 Kb

Regardless of the political commitment and the progress in responding to the AIDS epidemic, the reality of HIV related travel restrictions for entry and residence continue to exist in at least half countries represented in this forum.

HIV related travel restrictions:

• Create and perpetuate the myth that the risk of AIDS is outside our borders.
• Violate fundamental human dignity and human rights
• Fuel stigma and discrimination against those of us living with HIV
• Deny the greater involvement of people living with HIV in the response to the epidemic and deny a honest discussion on the linkages of mobility, migration and HIV [Migration and mobility are part of human history, for example only in 2005, 3 % of the global population migrated to some destination and up to half of these migrants were women and young people]
• The restrictions create the idea that people living with HIV are the enemies in this epidemic, not the virus itself
• Go against the commitments made in 2001 and 2006 and the goals of Universal Access by 2010 , and
• Send contradictory and hypocritical messages, because on the one hand we have commitments made but in the other hand we have borders closed.

Therefore, in the name of more than 30 million people living with HIV, we demand:

• That member states abolish ALL HIV related travel & residency restrictions and report regularly on progress made.

• That member states implement programs for migrant and mobile populations (including ethnic groups), with a human rights approach, in which HIV status should not be a precondition to access work or a reason for deportation
• That member states enact and enforce legislations that eliminate all forms of discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS, including specifically HIV related travel and residence restrictions, because these can be misinterpreted as a product of xenophobic measures more than a public health policy.
• That member states adopt a resolution that no high level meeting should ever again be held in any country with travel restrictions for people living with HIV.

HIV related travel restrictions are discriminatory…even migratory birds have laws and treaties that protect them while moving across borders, but not human beings living with HIV…

This has to change. But in order to achieve EQUALITY and JUSTICE for people living with HIV, we need to see real POLITICAL WILL and political commitment.

This IS possible. ...Today more than 70 countries do not have any kind of HIV related travel restrictions, being only two examples from my region, Latin America, Brazil and El Salvador.

Countries that removed HIV related travel & residence restrictions report no problems as a result of the elimination of the restrictions and they provide the kind of political leadership we need to respond to this epidemic.

We ask all countries to follow their example, to show real commitment and to join them.

Thank you.