16/10/2015 | Writer: Kaos GL
The fourth Symposium against Discrimination, which is to be held in dedication to the International Human Rights Day by Kaos GL Association, will take place on 12-13 December in Ankara.
The fourth Symposium against Discrimination, which is to be held in dedication to the International Human Rights Day by Kaos GL Association, will take place on 12-13 December in Ankara.
The Symposium that has been organized around the themes of rights-based struggle and social rights of LGBTs since 2012 opens “the right to health and the right to access to healthcare” to discussion this year.
The right to health is universal and the birthright of every human being, regardless of ethnicity, religion, language, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and political, economic and social status. However, on the one hand, legitimization of free market and the deconstruction of social welfare policies threaten the right to health and the right to access to healthcare at an increasing rate. On the other hand, discriminative, inequitable and unjust as well as exploitative politics derived from the intersections between neoliberalism and a certain type of conservatism exclude particular communities, including LGBTIs, from the healthcare system and(or) sentence them to be invisible. In this respect, the struggle for healthcare for all is not only about struggle against healthcare privatization and capitalist healthcare reforms, but also advocate for the plurality of life forms.
While we are building a new life form, the right to health and the right to access to healthcare should be reread through the lens of communities excluded from the whole system. In doing so, all forms of societal segments, including laborers, discriminated and oppressed by the system should be able to participate in the decision making mechanisms and processes. The task that the opposition groups should embrace would be the establishment of a solidarity platform to struggle against discrimination, inequality and privatization in the healthcare system.
We, as the LGBTIs, named as “sick, pathologic and abnormal” by the system and dominant medicine open the right to health and the right to access to healthcare to the discussion this year.
This year’s Symposium is dedicated to the psychologist Mahmut Şefik Nil. Our dearest friend Mahmut Şefik Nil was one of the founders of the Kaos GL, unfortunately he passed away in August, 2015.
Tags: human rights
