This looks like a list of actions to fulfil human rights or migrant rights rather than the rights of people living with the virus.

The [him] moderator seems to remember his Shan housekeeper in Chiang Mai using her cell phone on her motorbike after eight in the evening a few years back. Have things changed or was she just lucky?

[him] moderator

++++++++++++++++++++

The rights of PLHIV from migrant communities in Thailand – Give us legal status!
“Burma Spotlight” – Reporting from the Thai National AIDS Seminar, Bangkok, Thailand, 29-31 March 2011
 Wisa S

Here is what our friends from the migrant and displaced people’s communities recommended for Thai policy-makers, program managers and civil society groups on how to improve the situation for migrants living with HIV in Thailand or in the Thailand-Burma border area.

Legal aspects

1.    Give undocumented migrants and displaced people legal status
This status should ensure:
 - access to travel documents for health-related travel
- access to quality health care, education and housing
Currently, there are good programs available via government services such as the provincial public health office, BUT migrants are too afraid to access them because of the threat of police harassment and deportation.
2.    Align arbitrary rules at local level with existing national laws protecting migrant rights
This includes
- ensuring police and other officials enforce the law equally, not rules/regulations set up only for migrants
Currently, migrants in Chiang Mai are subjected to some arbitrary regulations, eg they are prohibited from riding motorcycles, being out after 8 pm, and using mobile phones. This provides a loophole for exploitation.
3.    Refine existing mechanisms and structures
- Give migrant health volunteers legal status as workers
(Allowing them to formally apply their unique skill set to support, for example, Thai health practitioners when they provide services to migrants)
- Establish a formal health fund for undocumented migrants and their dependents

Capacity building: shifting attitudes and fostering understanding

1.    Actively foster an environment in relevant settings that uses a rights-based approach to reduce stigma and discrimination against migrants and displaced people
This includes workshops and other activities in Thai
- Communities
- Schools (eg school exchanges, education about migration)
- Workplaces
- Health facilities
- Other stakeholders
2.    Actively promote and support a partnership between Thai and Burmese CSOs
This is essential in order to successfully be able to facilitate the process of influencing policy level to effect real, sustainable change.
3.    Provide health-related capacity building with regular follow up for migrant communities
This should include subjects like reproductive health, HIV and STI awareness and prevention training
4.    Train migrant/ethnic minority health workers to provide ART correctly
This includes, for example, medics who work inside eastern Burma providing ART to people in conflict zones who have no access at all to ART. Training should include knowledge about referral options.    

Service provision

1.    Increase humanitarian support to ALL migrant PLHIV
This means facilitating access to free, multilingual basic HIV-related health care
- the sustainable provision of VCCT, ARVs, OI treatment to, with or without documents
To illustrate: What point is there is having clinics or hospitals testing patients, but then not being able to follow up with ART?

Warm thanks to the wide range of seminar participants either from Burma, or working with HIV and Burmese ethnic minority communities in Thailand, who shared their thoughts: a medical doctor working for Social Action for Women (SAW, providing health care to women and children in the Thai-Burma border area); a representative of a youth network based in Mae Sot; migrant peer educators/volunteers from the Chiang Mai area; the HIV/AIDS Coordinator of the Students and Youth Congress of Burma (SYCB); Laurie Maund, Advisor to NAIRN (the Novices AIDS Intervention and Rehabilitation Network, focusing on the Shan community where Chiang Mai province abuts Shan State in Burma), and Convenor and Advisor for Sangha Metta Project (working in the North of Thailand and regionally); NAIRN novices; representatives from Mae Tao Clinic (a clinic providing health care services to migrants and displaced people in the Mae Sot area); and a representative of the MAP Foundation’s Prevention of HIV/AIDS Among Migrant Workers in Thailand (PHAMIT) program.