Catching Up...Chapter 2
(Left pic: Stijn Goossens; INPUD Activist, Belguim).
While we are still catching up on what has just gone before, let us not go any further without mentioning the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) and what is has set out to achieve.
To attempt to set up an international network of drug user groups is no small feat, in fact it must be one of the most difficult tasks imaginable. To combine limited resources, overworked and underpaid activists, multiple issues, languages, and continents and try and thread a solid, iron clad network from it, is clearly a challenge for the years ahead. Talks on the need for such a network had been continuing amongst user activists for years but it was a crisis at the 2005 IHRA Conference in Belfast that would highlight certain issues that couldn't be avoided any longer. The push to begin a network that was tightly linked into the worlds most important harm reduction conference in the world, soon became inevitable.
Nothing About Us Without Us...
BP managed to speak to Stijn Goossens, a user activist in his own country of Belguim and an organiser of INPUD. He explained that as the international user movement gathered strength and momentum, and more and more drug user activists played an empowered and determined role in the evolution of the conference and its harm reduction agenda, Belfast became one of those 'defining moments'. For the international user activists attending, it brought to their attention one of the fundamental obstacles drug users repeatedly face in attending such important networking and sharing/learning events.
What should be a reasonably straightforward procedure of people being able to take their legal prescriptions of controlled drugs into another country (in this case Northern Ireland) it was repeatedly proving to be a stumbling block in getting users together, and in Belfast it would prove so yet again. Harm reduction equipment, (a simple but functioning needle exchange) and adequate medical support on site, were rarely satisfactory and users again and again had to dig into to their own supplies to support others, - put in the unacceptable position of having to do something illegal. Clearly this wasn't good enough on an international stage such as this, and it was against everything IHRA was supposed to be about.
(Left Pic; INPUD meeting on day 1)
Stijn was at pains to explain that IHRA, the organisation that has developed the conference, did take this issue on board, the conference consortium was looked to for support and the decision was made to work much more closely with drug users themselves in future.
Vancouver was then the next IHRA conference and would be the founding moment when the first International Users Congress was held and 'The Vancouver Declaration' (of People who Use Drugs) was formulated by over 100 international user activists (see the INPUD website). An important document in the history of the user's movement - and a tool for the future - was born.
IHRA sought out funds for INPUD, sensing correctly that such a network was an essential component in their own progress as a harm reduction organisation. The money was then provided from the UK Department for International Development to help INPUD register itself as an official organisation and additional funds came from the Canadian International Development Agency, which will provide the practical support for the organising of skills building sessions and the opportunities for the organisation of User Activist networking during the conference. INPUD was able to play a variety of roles in getting over 100 user activists to the conference this year - no small feat.
This year, INPUD also made an agreement with WHO (World Health Organisation) and IHRA that for next years conference in Barcelona, INPUD will be entrusted with a larger role, in particular in those areas that are fundamental to ensuring that drug users are able to attend and contribute, without worrying about being sick, withdrawing, their health problems and other simple procedures for making attendance realistic and feasible. Milena, a user activist from Bulgaria, spoke passionately about our peers in from Russia for example, who don't have access to substitute medication at all even in their own countries yet it is essential that they are not excluded from attending due to this fact alone. Particularly in light of the extreme difficulties and incredible work drug user activists are doing in these countries, Milena feels it is crucial we find ways to get their voices heard on such an international stage. Similarly, there are countries that as drug users we don't feel safe to go to; a few years back there were many users who pulled out of the Thailand IHRA conference, fearing not only attending with their prescriptions, but also feeling it should have been boycotted as Thais who used drugs were being sent to boot camps, murdered and beaten while conference delegates ate lunches and discussed the persecution of drug users.
Although discussions were raised again over 2006/7 about INPUDs concerns about getting in particular, the Russians to attend, having translations available at the satellite meetings and ensuring there was at least one Polish Doctor available to support them with medications throughout their short stay at the conference, sadly, it became an issue again. Many of the Russians spent the conference withdrawing and again it was mostly up to the activists themselves to try and fill the gaps. The needle exchange and harm reduction setup was found wanting also and issues about the Conference's Consortuim were raised although, as Stijn stated, "From these problems we gain the opportunity for discussion and the search for solutions". And after discussions with the conference consortium, it was finally agreed INPUD would take over control of such issues in the future, gaining the opportunity to finally address and hopefully put an end to such simple, yet consistent obstacles to full user involvement.
The future however, could be seen as bright - as long as we don't look too close. The situations drug users face across the globe is still one of persecution, isolation, death by disease and neglect, victimisation, stigmatisation, incarceration - and so it goes on. In the same breath, we have the most impassioned, dedicated, responsive, and determined user activists around the world, continually working towards improving the welfare of their communities and creating ties, alliances and bridges with others - people and countries that only a few years ago wouldn't have dreamed on speaking to drug users, let alone acknowledging they know what they are talking about - and even more - that they can deliver too.
Stijn Goossens told BP, "Once we have gone through the process and have a structure that allows to us to have international partners that will involve us, that allows us to gather people from around the world to speak out on the issues that are affecting us at the grassroots, we will not have to have other people to speak for us, but we will be speaking for ourselves."
Well said.
