The Netherlands. Third European Meeting on ethnic minorities, migrants, and AIDS

Fortress Europe or Europe against AIDS?

The decision to found a political forum to represent ethnic minorities and migrants at the European level could, in the long run, considerably change the political chessboard of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Europe.

This political forum was launched on 24 September 1995 at the Third European Meeting on Migrants, Ethnic Minorities and AIDS, held in Drierbergen, The Netherlands. Seventy-five participants from 18 countries left the Meeting with a new priority: building up the Forum in their countries.

Since its creation in 1989, the group AIDS & Mobility (A&M), which originally called for the meetings in 1989, has made of migrants the first of its preoccupations (1).

Assessing the road from its first "information-exchange" meeting on migrants and AIDS (in May 1993) to the meeting in Drierbergen, A&M coordinator Rinske Duifhuizen admits it is "difficult to measure concrete results." However, the objective of developing a broad network and of circulating information has been "largely a success" and has led to a wide array of collaborations between people, communities, and organizations. This work led network members to recognize the need for a forum capable of pushing forward common political demands at the European level.

The meeting’s theme, skills building, underpinned the format and content of each of the workshops. Subjects included human rights, safer sex, iv drug use, and the ways in which these issues can be made an integral part of organizing against AIDS.

The NAZ Project (London) led two workshops: one on talking about sex and the other on fundraising. The NAZ team has been among the most active community-based organizations in building a pan-European immigrant/Black network against AIDS. With four years of organizing under its belt, the group has played a crucial role in organizing the last two European meetings.

NAZ was built at the intersection of the struggles and experiences of Black British, Gay/Lesbian, and AIDS activism. The Project’s dynamism and effectiveness also benefitted from the broader trend of the professionalization of Black British militancy. Today, NAZ operates as a "sexual health and HIV/AIDS agency," mainly for the South Asian community but also for the smaller Turkish, Arab, and Iranian communities in London.

NAZ has rapidly become a model for Black community AIDS organizing. However, as an activist from France explains, "if everybody talks about NAZ, it’s also because it’s practically this only structure of its type in Europe."

In fact, very large disparities in terms of organization exist from one country to another, from one community to another. Meetings like the one at Drierbergen seek to address such differences through information exchange, skills building, etc.

Such disparities, however, also raises questions about the capacity of a political Forum to represent adequately the whole spectrum of communities and organizations. At the very least, if the objective is to be lobbying and the logic that of representation, the Forum has a long way to go. Participation will need to be organized in some kind of systematic fashion (2). And the debate remains open as to the viability of common political demands - beyond symbolic and minimal ones - which will bring together the diversity of situations and experiences of Europe’s refugee, migrants, and Black/Third World communities.

(1) The network also includes the issues of tourism, sex work, etc.

(2) For example, the absence of major France-based groups like URMED, COMEDE, and of any African organization (URACA, FISI, OPALS, etc) from France shows the need to extend the network, whether or not representativity is the issue.