noTHing aboUT Us WiTHoUT Us? i Don’T THink so! Drug user activism and the International Network of People Who Use Drugs
Jude Byrne 54 55
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he need for the full involvement of drug users providing input at every level of the development of programmes targeting the injecting/illicit drug using community has not been fulfilled, even within the harm reduction sector. People who inject drugs (PWID) are still largely seen as a deviant group whose services are required for interaction, and this has been the case since the drug users’ movement began. Unlike the HIV/AIDS response that welcomed and saw value in our input, the drug and alcohol sector see current drug user activists as ‘failures’ of their system. And, who wants to come face-to-face with their ‘failures’ on a daily basis? The inclusion of people who use drugs in the harm reduction movement and the development of the International Network of People who use Drugs (INPUD) cannot be discussed without first looking at our history within the HIV/AIDS public health response. For it was within the context of the HIV/AIDS response that people who use drugs were first acknowledged as having any positive identity in the wider
Jude Byrne has worked as a drug user activist since the late 1980s. She has worked in peer-based local and national drug user organisations while working towards the development of an international organisation. She is currently living in Canberra, Australia, and chair of INPUD which was established to ensure the most marginalised community members have a voice at the global level on issues that affect their lives. Jude has written papers and presented at conferences on issues affecting the community of people who use drugs, she has been an intravenous drug user for nearly forty years and recently completed a successful hepatitis C treatment regime.
community - albeit in a small, specific sector - let alone a role to play in the education, support and advocacy of our own community. The premise on which HIV/ AIDS education and prevention was based was peer education. While the communities of drug users have had some early and notable successes developing peerbased drug user organisations in individual countries such as France, Germany and Australia, the majority of countries were, and are still, unable or unwilling to support this pragmatic and humane public health policy. The crux lies in the problems of implementing a public health policy that is diametrically opposed to both the drug and alcohol sectors’ philosophy of abstinence, and the legal framework of prohibition in which it has to work. I am not going to delve into the facts and figures of HIV/AIDS infection worldwide. Suffice to say, the drug injecting community is increasingly bearing the burden of this disease in an ever-increasing number of countries. In this article, while charting our accomplishment in developing INPUD and the international drug user’s movement, I will also try to answer why our journey has been so difficult. The question of why our successes have been so hard won must be discussed. It is obvious to activists in the drug using community that it has often been external factors that have hindered our progress, not, as is so often said to be the case, that drug users are not a real community. We are a community in every sense of the word; we have our own culture, language and beliefs. Most tellingly, we can come together across languages and cultural barriers and understand a universality of experiences, stigma, discrimination and, too often, shame.