3rd Regional Network Meeting Will be Held in Zagreb

Zagreb meeting will be the place where members of the network decide where to organize the upcoming meetings and discuss further on the structure of the network. The meeting will take place between the dates of 25-29 April. 

In May 2011, 21 LGBT organizations have met for the first time in Ankara to establish closer cooperation on advocacy and promotion of LGBT rights in Balkans, Middle East and Caucasia. This initial meeting has shown the strong similarities in the roots of homophobia in different cultural parts of the world. The meeting has also showed high motivation for cross-regional collaboration of LGBT organizations who are dealing with similar scope of the problems. Queer Zagreb, together with its partner Kaos GL from Ankara, has committed to work on development on the regional LGBT network of organizations that will in the following period start to work on development of common projects. Initial phase of the work will be exchange of knowledge and experiences. For this phase it is crucial to organize continues meetings -3 meetings per year- which will result with clear development of action plan and establishment of different cross-regional projects. For 2012, 3 meetings have been planned.

During Zagreb meeting, an international conference on LGBT activism in different cultural contexts will be organized, comparing the achievements and differences in LGBT movements with focus on Balkans, Middle East and Caucasia. The network members will also have opportunity to see in depth how Queer Zagreb festival is functioning and what was the festival’s impact in the last 10 years on improvement of LGBT rights in Croatia and in general Balkan region. During the Zagreb meeting we shall also define scopes of collaboration between network members and focus our work to detect similar LGBT organizations/initiatives in three regions with special focus on Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Syria. Transferring the knowledge between member organizations will be the key principle of network functioning.

 

Network at the moment has a vision to function as a platform of mutual learning and supporting with no ambition for formalizing it at the moment. It aims to create a solidarity shelter for the regional organizations living under homophobic, transphobic, nationalist and sexist policies. A plan for joint support will be developed and bilateral and multilateral cooperations between organizations will be defined and established depending on organizations profiles and preferences.

The list of participants will be created with those who show interest in participating in the meetings by replying to each call. Those who are interested in taking active part in the network and work for the development of the team in the organized meetings shall e-mail to both addresses below:

 

Gordan Bosanac - gbosanac@zamir.net – Queer Zagreb

 

 

Photo: Nazik Armenakian

 

Related link: http://kaosgl.org/page.php?id=10714

 

 

Kaos GL, the host of the 7th IDAHO events in Turkey, organized the second Regional Network Against Homophobia meeting on February 16-19 in Ankara with the participation of organizations from the Middle East, Caucasia and the Balkans.