Call for candidates for International Drug User Activists working group

[Courtesy of Stijn Goossens] Dear friends, This is a call for User Activists living in North-America, Latin-America, Africa, Oceania, Asia, Europe to be candidates for being in a working group of International Drug User Activists. This group will prepare the International Network Of People Who User Drugs to be an official network with statutes and a mission statement and anything else that is needed to be an official network. There are many drug user organizations around the world. Since the 1970's, the local level developed in such way that there's emerged a strong need to get organized on the international level. Having our own official network will allow us to present people who use drugs as speakers at the internationally organized level. This can accelerate the process of involvement of people who use drugs in the issues that matter to us at whatever level. The working group needs very skilled activists who are able to put some of their time in it over a period of a few months. Candidates have to be able to work online. Some of the job will be to consult other activists and rapport back to the group. Candidates have to agree with the Vancouver Declaration: the declaration in 15 languages (see http://hardcoreharmreducer.be/InternationalDrugUserActivists.html). The group works online and passes on what was produced to the 13 May congress to make definit decisions. We work with 6 global regions: Latin-America, North-America, Africa, Oceania, Europe and Asia. This is no indication for how the international network in the end will be structured geographically. For now this is just to get us to work with a core group of activists with as simple as possible global balance. We're looking for Two represents out of each region. They both are equal members to the working group. It's not that we have a represent and a back up, we have two represents. This also enables having gender balance. Candidates send in some written back ground on themselves, what you do in User Activism and your motivation for being in the working group. Send it to [email protected] . If there are more as two candidates for a region then we'll discuss the situation and make desions after that. I count on your flexibility in dealing with all kinds of obstacles. I propose 1 week for people to present themselves as a candidate. That is Monday 29 Januari. I wait for your emails coming in! Stijn Goossens [email protected] WWW.HaRdCOREhARMREdUCER.BE HaRdCOREhARMREdUCER's Drug War Log 2007 IHRC Executive Program Committee