A first look at ILGA-Europe's Annual Conference 2010

By Gwen on Sunday, November 7, 2010 - 23:44

ILGA-Europe is one of those organizations you know about and sometimes hear about, but you’re partly always wondering about what it is they actually do.

Described as “an international non-governmental umbrella organization bringing together 277 organizations from 40 out of 48 countries” in an information booklet, I think it’s pretty normal that you start thinking it might just be on its way to prove all the stereotypes about Europe as an institution right.

I wasn’t a Euro-skeptic to begin with, but a day into the 14th Annual ILGA-Europe Conference I’m completely cured of any Euro-doubt as well. From the way we’re addressed – “ladies and gentlemen and others” – to the flashy rainbow suit jacket of Ronald Plasterk to the smart conversations people have over coffee, it all breathes importance and I’m absolutely positive that good stuff is happening in The Hague these days.

Ronald Plasterk / © Saskia Joreen for eurOut.org

I’m sure I said before that it’s a simple fact there’s a hierarchical structure in LGBT organizations and that sometimes, when the larger organizations want something the smaller grassroots organizations don’t agree with, the grassroots do not get listened to by the mainstream authorities. And I said it like it’s always an inherently negative thing, which in some cases it might be, but I don’t think that’s generally the case. Not only do I get the feeling ILGA-Europe is at the forefront of many things, it’s also very clear the members are listened to and encouraged to engage constructively in debate. So much so that, at a birthday party I was invited to on Friday night, I was complaining about having written so much because "all those people have an opinion".

As you probably already know, ILGA-Europe is an advocacy organization that operates on one of the highest levels possible – both in the European Union and the UN. Although this might make its causes and achievements very abstract to the people on the street, I think that everything ILGA-Europe does eventually trickles down to us. The Annual Conference is for the most part made up of workshops and panels, and there are four plenary sessions. The first plenary session consisted of opening remarks, welcome speeches, and an attempt at explaining the system for paying for public transport in the Netherlands.

The welcome speeches were by Ronald Plasterk, former minister for LGBT issues in the Netherlands and member of the House of Representatives, and Frits Huffnagel, an openly gay member of the city council in The Hague. Although I later overheard some Dutch people say they’d heard Plasterk’s speech several times already, and I even heard that it was weird that they were the two most important Dutch speakers on LGBT issues, I don’t think it matters that much. That they were the two speakers chosen doesn’t imply no one else has achieved anything for our community.