Methodology

Where does the information come from?

This site documents information governing the movement of people living with HIV across borders as well as access to HIV treatment for non-nationals. These data are collated from a number of sources including:

• Official sources including government policies, laws, and regulations;
• Statements by government ministers and embassy officers;
• Responses from officials to queries by our researchers;
• Foreign governments such as the U.S. State Department and other Foreign Ministries;
• International bodies such as UNAIDS;
• Civil society organisations with knowledge of national regulations;
• Information shared by people living with HIV who have lived experience of crossing borders with HIV.

We take all of this information into account when determining how to categorise restrictions in a country. Where sources disagree on the restrictions in place, or provide conflicting information, we present this information as we find it. We do not generally prioritise some sources over others, except in instances where official government sources outline a clear position. Where a conflict cannot be resolved, we classify a country’s restrictions as ‘unclear’.

Updates

Each country page includes an ‘updated’ date. This corresponds to the date on which we last updated the information written on the country page. Importantly, it does not mean that information cited from external sources was updated on that date. In fact, this information may not have been updated for some time, in some instances for several years.

What are the limitations of the information?

The true scale of the discrimination experienced by people living with HIV when travelling or relocating cannot be known, and the data compiled here can only provide a limited overview of the consequences of statutory regulations and official policies.

While this site attempts to provide as complete a picture of restrictions on HIV travel and migration as possible, it is subject to several limitations such as the lack of transparency of national regulations, the arbitrary way in which they can be enforced, and the lack of reporting on their implementation.

Whereas cases of HIV criminalisation are often reported on by news media, cases of people living with HIV being denied entry or deported from countries based on their HIV-positive status are much less frequently reported. As such, this site is more reliant on lived experience by people living with HIV than our Global HIV Criminalisation Database.

We are also subject to general limitations around the unavailability of information from certain regions and countries, due to factors such as language or cultural barriers, or political environments which do not encourage free sharing of information. As such, we currently lack data on a limited number of countries, meaning that these country pages contain limited or contradictory information, or lack information entirely.

UNAIDS and the U.S. State Department

We routinely reference data collected by both UNAIDS and the U.S. State Department, as these bodies have also undertaken global analyses of travel restrictions in every country. However, these data are not regularly updated. UNAIDS’ data was collected in 2019, while the date of U.S. State Department data varies by country, but in many instances has not been updated for several years. As such, these sources form part of the data relied on here, but our own supplementary research identifies other sources of information which are also taken into account.