Organization:  Community Development Bethesda YAKKUM

Background/Context:

Indonesian migrant and mobile workers living with HIV, whether international or domestic, face overlapping barriers to prevention, treatment, and retention in care. These barriers arise from gender, documentation status, employment sector, poverty, migration policy, and geographic mobility. Female domestic workers may experience isolation, limited control over healthcare decisions, and exposure to gender-based violence, while male workers in plantations, mining, and construction often have little opportunity to attend clinics or routine HIV monitoring. Informal work, limited leave, and fear of job loss compound these difficulties. Destination-country screening rules can link HIV detection to termination or deportation without referral, leaving returning workers with gaps in treatment, and similar disruptions occur along internal corridors and borderlands through medication supply interruptions, weak referral systems, and limited insurance.

Belu District in East Nusa Tenggara, which borders Timor-Leste, is a key setting for studying these dynamics because poverty and cross-border mobility push many people into precarious work and across different health systems. It is also a predominantly Catholic area (about 88%), where churches and faith communities can offer meaning, support, accompaniment, and help navigating care, yet may also reinforce stigma, nondisclosure, or exclusion. Because the interplay of migration, gender, socioeconomic conditions, stigma, and faith is poorly understood in such settings, this research will examine how these factors shape healthcare access and experiences, and how faith shapes coping and the role of churches. The aim is to produce local evidence to strengthen referral, transitional care, community support, and cross-border coordination, and to identify ways faith actors can support continuity of care while addressing stigmatizing attitudes.

Research Question:

This project studies how faith and church communities, structural barriers and access to health care shape the experiences of Indonesian migrant workers living with HIV in Belu District, with the aim of strengthening church accompaniment, health policy, and reliable access to medical (ARV) treatment.

Study Aims:

1. To examine how Indonesian migrant and mobile workers living with HIV in Belu District, East Nusa Tenggara, experience and overcome overlapping obstacles, including gender discrimination, financial hardship, and healthcare barriers, and to understand how these factors affect their access to care and ARV continuity.
2. To explore how faith and spirituality shape the ways migrant workers living with HIV understand and manage HIV and health, and to use evidence gathered directly from migrant people living with HIV to strengthen church acceptance and accompaniment, improve health care policies and medical ethics, and support reliable access to ARV treatment

Impact:

This research will offer local evidence on the experiences of migrant workers living with HIV in Belu District. The findings may help inform efforts to improve continuity of ARV treatment and support better coordination between health services. They may also help churches and faith communities reflect on how to offer acceptance and accompaniment, while addressing attitudes that can contribute to stigma.

Open Positions: Fully Staffed

Timeline:  January 2027 – December 2027

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