Current estimates indicate that the total number of international migrants throughout the world is about 175 million people. This figure does not include internal migration, which, in China alone, is estimated to comprise between 100 and 200 million people (depending on the definition used). Nor does it include refugees and internally displaced people (estimated globally at 22 million people) or trafficked people (estimated at 4 million people).

Migration, both internal and international, is widespread throughout the South and South-East Asia regions. The GMS, comprising Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Thailand and the southern provinces of China, is a particularly active area for population mobility and migration. In Thailand alone, there were an estimated 2.8 million foreign migrants in 2005, including over 800,000 new MMPs who arrived in the country that year from Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. It is also noteworthy that adult HIV prevalence rates in three of the countries in this migration circuit (Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar) are among the highest in Asia.

For the monitoring of the progress made in the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS), it was found in 2003 that globally, despite the demonstrated association between population mobility and HIV, less than half of the countries had strategies in place to promote HIV prevention for cross-border migrants. Even though efforts are underway to address AIDS among mobile populations, in the South-East Asian countries and southern provinces of China, some limited initiatives have been taken to protect internal migrants from HIV infection. However due to a lack of political will and/or technical capacity, very few such measures have been taken to protect cross-border mobile populations. Generally, the needs of migrants have been ignored in national strategic HIV/AIDS plans. Moreover, an enabling environment for the provision of multi-sectoral technical support from governments, the private sector, and people living with HIV or AIDS (PLWHAs) and MMPs is often lacking. Yet the needs of MMPs will not be addressed effectively until all these stakeholders are working closely together in a collaborative and coordinated manner, not only at the country level, but also at the inter-country and regional levels.

This is a particularly crucial issue for the South-East Asian countries and southern provinces of China, where population mobility has been accelerating sharply for several years with the opening up of economies and borders, the rapid development of transport infrastructure, and the consequent generation of new socio-economic opportunities. Within the region, both immigration and emigration are significant for Thailand and Malaysia; whereas the Philippines, Cambodia, Lao PDR, China, Indonesia, Myanmar and Viet Nam are mainly source countries, and Singapore and Brunei Darussalam are mainly destination countries.

The principal challenge associated with internal and international mobility in the South-East Asian countries and southern provinces of China is that it is essentially an unplanned phenomenon. Countries are often ill-prepared to send or receive migrants. Migration management systems are usually weak or absent. There is a need for increased awareness of underlying principles of migration management, namely that regularized migration protects the interests of government, business, the public and migrants themselves.

Greater acknowledgement is needed by national governments of the immense potential benefits arising from migration for both source and destination countries. If managed properly, migration can truly be a “win-win” phenomenon. Nevertheless, there are many significant challenges associated with cross-border and internal migration, especially with its rapidly growing scale. The absence of commitment by governments is often reflected through unfavourable policies and poor resource allocation for empowering migrants and strengthening systems that can facilitate safe mobility of human resources. At the community level, the lack of preparedness often leads to increased vulnerability of migrants to exploitation, trafficking and HIV.

The heightened HIV vulnerability of MMPs and their consequent need for care and support are already serious problems for governments to deal with, and will become even more so with the rapidly escalating scale of migration. In fact, the region has now reached the point where a major shift in regional and country responses is required, going well beyond the unilateral or bilateral mechanisms that have been used traditionally.

However, the region is not homogenous. Its various countries are experiencing different stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, have different levels of response as measured by the AIDS Programme Effort Index, have different levels of development as measured by the Human Development Index, have different patterns and cycles of migration, and are at different stages of regional and global integration. This has resulted in considerable intra-regional variation in national political engagement, leadership, social mobilization and partnership development, i.e. the key prerequisites for an enabling environment. Two other key concerns throughout the region are a shortage of resources and weak institutional capacity to deal with HIV and AIDS in the context of mobility. These are all factors that will affect country action and interaction on ways and means to keep MMPs safe from the HIV threat and to give them access to the social, legal and health services they need.

According to John Morrison (2003), corporate social responsibility is usually poorly equipped to respond to strategic international social issues such as migration [Development, Migration: Citizenship, Identity and Rights, Volume 46, No. 3, September 2003]. To remedy this, businesses have to accept that corporate social responsibility is only sustainable if defined within universal and objective parameters (i.e. human rights). Both business and government should accept the need for a holistic policy to migration that allows for controlled economic, social (family reunion) and humanitarian (refugee) immigration. Business companies, as global citizens, need to have as much ownership for social and humanitarian immigration as for economic immigration. Business interests in migration must be underpinned by a more fundamental commitment to human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights. All activities aimed at increasing business commitment to human rights should be supported as a prerequisite to its involvement in issues of migration.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan has quoted that:

“…migration brings with it many complex challenges - including issues of human rights and economic opportunity, of labour shortages and unemployment, of ‘brain drain’ and ‘brain gain’, of multiculturalism and integration, of refugee flow and asylum seekers, of law enforcement and human trafficking, of human security and national security”.

- International Organization of Migration, World Economic and Social Survey, International Migration, 2004.

Yet the biggest challenge of all may be the heightened vulnerability of MMPs to the acquisition of HIV infection, and their consequent need for health services. While intertwined with the other migration problems and opportunities cited by the Secretary-General, this particular migration issue stands out as possibly having the greatest potential long-range consequences for the South-East Asian countries and southern provinces of China region as a whole. It is therefore imperative that the countries of the region develop and implement, at the national, inter-country and regional levels, an effective response to HIV and AIDS in the context of mobility.