International Workers Aid

International Workers Aid (IWA) was an informal network created in autumn 1993 that gathered NGOs and informal groups from numerous European countries, particularly Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Bringing together people mostly from the political left, IWA united humanitarian aid with political solidarity. It organised over 30 convoys transporting food to BiH, mostly for miners in Tuzla, where it cooperated with local trade unions. IWA focused on Tuzla because it had a strong workers’ movement tradition and because it was a stronghold for the defence of a democratic and multi-ethnic BiH.

Besides the convoys, IWA undertook other more structural activities in Tuzla. They supported, for example, the creation and publication of a trade unions paper, in order to strengthen the Coal Miners’ Trade union and address the lack of communication between the union and the workers.  The idea was developed in 1994, and the first issue of “Sindikalna Informacija” was finally published in December 1995. 30 issues followed in the next three years (with the title changing, in March 1998, to Rudar (Miner)). Each issue had 7.000 printed copies, which were distributed for free to the miners.