The Montréal Declaration on the right of people who use drugs to be protected from state sanctioned violence

In an era of rising populism and heightened political repression around the world, communities most affected by HIV, including people who use drugs, sex workers, and LGBT people, with specific concern for transgender people, gay men and other men who have sex with men; are experiencing an escalation in state sanctioned violence fuelled by pervasive stigma and discrimination against people who use drugs, and divisive rhetoric about law, order and public health.

Since the 30th of June 2016, more than 7000 extrajudicial killings of people who use drugs have taken place under Duterte’s brutal drug war in the Philippines in an unconscionable spectacle of intimidation, humiliation and violence. Similarly in Indonesia, alarmist rhetoric has led to the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty for drug offences, in direct contravention of international law. Further, in recent months, thousands of foreign-born people who use drugs have been detained and deported in the U.S.; and people who use drugs are experiencing high levels of intimidation, torture and arrest in Cambodia as well as in Tanzania. These are a few of the many recent examples of state sanctioned campaigns against people who use drugs that have deleteriously impacted their health, safety, wellbeing and families.

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