International News, issue 5

Gay Moroccan Man Wins Deportation Appeal in Britain

A 38-year-old Moroccan man who has lived with his British partner for over ten years has won his appeal against a decision by the Home Office to deport him.

According to Mark Watson, Chair of the Stonewall Immigration Group, this is "the sixteenth such case we have won, and we have yet to lose a case." Watson is "optimistic" that "our case is so compelling, it is only a matter of time before" policy is changed "in our favor."

The Home Office had refused to accept that the existence of a ten year gay relationship with a British citizen were grounds for allowing the man to stay in the United Kingdom and insisted that deportation was the only course of action.

However, the Immigration Appeals Adjudicator concluded that the fact that they "could not continue" their relationship if one partner were to be deported to Morocco constituted "compassionate grounds" for allowing the appeal. The adjudicator also indicated that to deport the man could have been in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Home Office have not appealed the decision.

Contact : Mark Watson
Stonewall Immigration
16 Clerkenwell Close
London EC1R 0AA
Tel : +44 171 336 8860
Fax : +44 171 336 8864
E-mail : mark@stonewall.org.uk

Spain "Needs a little push," Say Migrants Conference Hosts

Barceloña’s HIV prevention program may be the only one in Spain which includes migrants, according to Marisa Ros of the city’s Unidad Medicina Tropical. She hopes that hosting the Fourth Meeting on AIDS, Migrants, and Ethnic Minorities November 9-13 will help "push the official institutions" into doing more.

Last year’s meeting launched the European AIDS & Ethnic Minority Network, after several years of slow but steady consensus building and collaboration between immigrant- and Black-community based organizations together with institutional projects like AIDS & Mobility (see Migrants against HIV/AIDS, December 1995).

Questions remain, however, as to the development of the Network from a small, tightly-knit group of individuals who have been working together, in some cases, since the late 1980s, into some sort of representative body with the capacity for agenda setting and political lobbying at the national and international levels.

The Meeting’s organizing committee will be meeting in early September to finalize the conference agenda.

Contact : Rinske Van Duifhuizen
AIDS & Mobility / NYGZ
PO Box 500
3440 AM Woerden
The Netherlands
Tel : +31 34 843 7600
Fax : +31 34 843 7666

Positively Irish Action on AIDS Shuts Down

Despite an international campaign against the brutal defunding of London-based Positively Irish Action on AIDS (PIAA), the organization closed its doors on 30 June 1996. Since the decision by the Inner London HIV Health Commissioners Group to withdraw all funding on 1 April 1996 (see Migrants against HIV/AIDS, May 1996), PIAA workers have struggled to find ways of continuing to provide support to Irish people living with HIV/AIDS. Despite "transitional funding" from the ILHHCG, the group realized that the current political climate made government funding for AIDS "unstable," resulting in a shift to HIV charities suddenly "experiencing a heavier demand."

Along with intense local work as the only HIV specific organisation of the Irish community in Britain, PIAA had also been one of the key players in the international networking of the Ethnic Minority & AIDS Network, consistently supported multi-community, cross-border collaborative organizing.

For PIAA’s workers, like Oonagh O’Brien, the ordeal has also been a time to take stock of what has been achieved. "The support from the Irish community" during the campaign against defunding "shows that we have indeed put AIDS on the Irish agenda." And PIAA remains committed to "working with other agencies to incorporate an Irish dimension in their work." Already, there are plans to produce an advice and information directory.

PIAA’s reports can be obtained from :
Action Group on Irish Youth
356 Holloway Road
London N7 6PA
Tel : +44 171 700 8137

Swiss Migrants and Police Social Workers Develop Joint Project

"The situation must change," explains Eunice Carvahlo one of the Swiss Projet Migrants-Santé workers. "Drug and HIV prevention work must also get done for foreign communities in the Basel region (northeast Switzerland), with their collaboration."

Multicultural rhetoric, however, has resulted in a collaboration with the "Drogenfragen" section of the Basel Police Department to develop prevention measures to use in working with second and third generation youth of Italian origin.

A Multilingual European AIDS Directory

NAM Publications’ European AIDS directory is a valuable tool for AIDS organizations involved in international campaigning or networking. It is best used as a detailed mailing list sorted by country, by city, and by "key areas of work." Names of contacts, not just addresses, are given for each organization.

Short summaries about HIV/AIDS discrimination and prevention precede each country’s section. In some cases, information about migrants’ rights is included.

NAM’s Brian Cooper would "like to include more on HIV and migration in the introductory sections," but to do so, much more research needs to go into the introductory sections.

European AIDS Directory
NAM National AIDS Manual
Unit 52, Eurolink Business Centre
49, Effra Road
London SW2 1BZ