Attachments
Foreword
“Journeys: Experiences of Nepalese and Bangladeshi cross border migrants living with HIV”, a compilation of three different studies conducted in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, reflects the fact that the journeys of migrants especially for those living with HIV across continuum of mobility are challenging.
In the context of general migration discourse, one of the existing facts is that in different forms majority of migrants have to face multiple levels of stigma, discrimination and harassments at source, transit and destinations. For many migrants living conditions are not well especially in destination. For those living with HIV, the journey is even critical because of the challenges in accessing health services including access to ART. For women, the levels of vulnerabilities are deeper and thus are forced to face additional vulnerabilities. While exploring barriers to access to services related to HIV, one of the interesting findings of the study is that availability of treatment, care and support services for PLHIV doesn’t always ensure accessibility and it explains the reasons and evidences behind it.
The significance of this study is to bring the issues and challenges around access to services so that it would help stakeholders including the government and civil society to take collective actions accordingly. Meanwhile, EMPHASIS being a regional project on cross border migration, study also captures some of the innovative intervention and facilitation of EMPHASIS in informing, alerting and supporting migrants to access services in the continuum of mobility starting from source, transit and destination. These innovations have added new values and learning in the journey of AIDS response in the region.
The authors of this study, Mirza Manbira Sultana and Navneet Kaur, have tried their level best to consolidate the findings of three different studies conducted in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. I appreciate this effort to capture issues and challenges as well as in sharing some learning from EMPHASIS interventions. In the meantime, I also appreciate entire team in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, partners, PLHIV networks, migrants and stakeholders and reviewers in putting collective efforts at various levels to complete this study.
Prabodh Devkota
Senior Regional Project Director, EMPHASIS- CARE International