Workshop organized by MOPH Thailand, UNDP-SEAHIV, WHO, ASEAN Secretariat, FHI/USAID and SEAMEO-GTZ-CHASPPAR

A joint publication of UNDP-SEAHIV, Ministry of Public Health (Thailand), ASEAN, WHO, FHI, USAID, GTZ and SEAMEO

Foreword

The impetus for population movement in the South-East Asia region has been influenced over time by numerous factors including family ties, cultural affinities, socio-political stimuli, natural disasters, wars and, more recently, through large infrastructure construction projects as well as widening gaps in economic development. Furthermore, the mobility of people in South-East Asia took place for centuries before the existence of today's form of national boundaries. This mobility is most often characterized by people either fluctuating between source and host communities, or becoming uprooted for permanent resettlement elsewhere.
The purpose of the ASEAN Workshop on population movement and HIV vulnerability is to present an alternative systems approach in assessing the interrelationship between population mobility and HIV vulnerability which moves beyond the traditional perspective of migrants and HIV/ AIDS by examining both internal and international mobility. Those two types of mobility can be interlinked, and jointly, can contribute to the HIV vulnerability for those mobile groups, the source communities they come from, and the host communities with which they come in contact.
The United Nations Development Programme South-East Asia HIV and Development Project (UNDP-SEAHIV) focuses on the linkages between development, population movement and HIV/AIDS. UNDP-SEAHIV, in support of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Task Force on AIDS, and the Royal Thai Government, as the acting focal point within the ASEAN Task Force for Population Movement and HIV/AIDS, organized a workshop from 10th to 12th November 1999 in Chiang Rai, Thailand, entitled ASEAN Workshop on Population Movement and HIV Vulnerability. Collaborators included the Family Health International (FHI), SEAMEO-GTZ-CHASSPAR and World Health Organization (WHO) South-East Asia Regional Office.
The workshop objective was to formulate joint action plans among clusters of countries in South-East Asia with the purpose of countering the HIV vulnerability associated with population movement. This Report summarizes the workshop proceedings, including the proposed action plans and recommendations that were developed and subsequently fully endorsed by the ASEAN Task Force on AIDS at its 7th meeting, 16th-18th November 1999.
UNDP-SEAHIV gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Dr. Martha Ainsworth, a senior economist of the World Bank Washington DC; Mr. Jacques du Guerny, Focal Point on HIV and on ageing, Chief, Population Services, a population and HIV/AIDS specialist for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Rome; Mr. Maurice Apted and Mr. Tony Lisle, as facilitators from the UNAIDS Asia-Pacific Intercountry Team (APICT); Mr. Guy Scandlen, as UNDP-SEAHIV's lead facilitator; Mr. Robert Anthony Oliver and Mr. John Richardson, the workshop proceedings editors. Their contributions as well as the active inputs from each and every one of the workshop participants made these proceedings a rich document of collective wisdom on population movement, development and HIV vulnerability in South-East Asia.

Download publication in pdf format: English

974-87637-8-1

June 2000