Fondazione Lega Italiana per la Lotta contro l'AIDS - LILA Milano ETS
LILA Milano
LILA Milano is a non profit organization founded in 1989.
ID: 084074023191-66
Lobbying Activity
Response to Mid-term review of the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025
23 Aug 2023
It is extremely important that the EU, through its bodies, issues guidelines and strategies aimed at protecting fundamental rights and ensuring equal treatment and equality for all people, and specifically addresses issues related to the LGBTIQ+ community. Such documents are much needed in these times to give guidance to national governments and hopefully to inspire EU citizens. We are all aware that in some EU countries LGBTIQ+ people are still discriminated and victims of abuses and physical violence, at risk of social exclusion and threatened in many situations; they cannot enjoy a peaceful and safe life and this is outrageous since they should enjoy the same rights as all the other citizens. Our organization offers free services to LGBTIQ+ people who experience discrimination and violence and we are worried about the increase in reported cases and the difficulties that they have to face in so many fields of their lives. We should ask ourselves what right we have to impose suffering on others, in the name of what principle we feel right when causing pain and unhappiness. My organization will continue to fight for a more inclusive world, a society of justice where all people, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation - can feel at home and at peace. We count on the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025 as an important reference document for our work.
Read full responseResponse to EU Drugs Agenda and Action Plan
15 Jul 2020
LILA, the Italian League for Fighting AIDS, is a civil society organization that since its foundation in the late ‘Eighties advocated for the introduction and dissemination of harm reduction strategies in the interventions targeted to people using drugs. It is involved, with other NGOs, in promoting at national and European level drug policy reforms based on human rights and universal access to treatment and health services; it is a member of the EU HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis and TB Civil Society Forum, which has established links with the EU CSFD, aiming at the meaningful involvement of civil society in drug policies.
In our view, the Road Map towards the new EU Drugs Agenda and EU Drugs Plan for 2021-2025 has a quite different approach with respect to the previous 2013-2020 Drugs Strategy, and “different” conveys a negative meaning in this case. Evidence-based harm reduction strategies and services, investments for the protection of the health and life of people using drugs - including focus on the prevention of HIV, hepatitis and TB, access to treatment and social support services free of stigma are not sufficiently promoted nor highlighted any longer in the document and should be re-prioritized as they were up to now.
The proposed draft mainly concentrates on law enforcement and supply-reduction activities which have proven unable to tackle the drug “problem”. In our opinion, criminalization of drug use, disproportionate punishment and incarceration are not the answers and the new EU Drugs Agenda should pursue the decriminalization of personal drug use, focusing on addressing the needs of vulnerable groups, offering support services and contrasting stigma and discriminatory policies, investing in the improvement of the health, living and social conditions of marginalized people. International agencies such as the UN and WHO call for human rights- and evidence-based approaches to the drug phenomenon and for the involvement of civil society in the development and implementation of drug policies at all levels. We strongly recommend to adopt such approaches.
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