ILIS Herstory

After the Geneva events, the ILIS secretariat returns to Amsterdam. The work to empower black, migrant and refugee lesbians continued, and ILIS contributes to developing lesbian networks in both Latin America and Asia . The newsletter reached its peak circulation, and on the political front, the demands put forward by the associations began to receive a positive response. But the energy starts to...

Whether at the UN Conference in Nairobi or the ILIS work in Amsterdam, the issue of racism is paramount. Too often white and middle-class, lesbians tend to view the world through their own lens, which obviously does not suit everyone. Issues of class and race come up at every meeting, and, recognizing that these issues are essential, the Vanille-Fraise Collective organized the great Geneva confere...

ILIS is expanding rapidly. The organization’s secretariat is rotating. It moves to Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris… The newsletter is reaching more and more people, and activists are travelling to expand their activities across every continent. The autonomous collective Vanille-Fraise is preparing to hold a major ILIS conference in Geneva. Meanwhile, ILIS members are traveling to Nairobi to attend the...

We meet the pioneers of ILIS who, with the support of the local lesbian group Interpot, organised the very first international lesbian conference in Amsterdam. That was in 1980. ILIS began to take shape, published its first newsletters, and expanded its network. It was decided that the next conference would be held in Turin. Up to this point, ILIS is still a subgroup of the I-G-A (which would late...

We start in 2017 at the annual ILGA-Europe conference in Cyprus. Eighty lesbians come together and decide to form an independent group. And so EL*C is born. Propelled by their enthusiasm, the new network announces that it will organise the first ever international lesbian conference. The first? No it is actually not, as a Dutch activist points out - and introduces them to the existence of ILIS, a...