While international human rights law establishes the right to health and non-discrimination, few countries have realized their obligations to provide HIV treatment to non-citizens-including refugees, long-term migrants with irregular status, and short-term migrants. Two countries, South Africa and Thailand, provide useful illustrations of how government policies and practices discriminate against non-citizens and deny them care. In South Africa, although individuals with irregular status are afforded a right to free health care including antiretroviral therapy (ART), non-South African citizens are frequently denied ART at public health care institutions. In Thailand, even among registered migrants, only pregnant women are entitled to ART. In order to meet international human rights law-which requires the provision of a core minimum of health services without discrimination-states in the Global South and worldwide must make essential ART drugs available and accessible to migrants on the same terms as citizens.
Migrant; HIV/AIDS; Antiretroviral therapy; Human rights; Right to health