Human rights and drug policies: Reflecting on a year of successes and frustrations - International Human Rights Day 2024

Today, 10th December 2024, marks International Human Rights Day, with this year’s theme being ‘Our rights. Our future. Right now’. As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk explains, the aim of this day is to ‘inspire everyone to acknowledge the importance and relevance of human rights, change perceptions by countering negative stereotypes and misconceptions and mobilize action to reinvigorate a global movement for human rights’.

A global view shows that 2024’s track record has been disastrous in terms of human rights. The war in Ukraine continues unabated, with an increasing number of killings and little hope of a resolution in the coming months. In the Middle East, violence also continues to escalate, with an ongoing genocide in Palestine claiming the lives of thousands, the more recent invasion of Lebanon by Israel and the civil war in Syria. The impacts of armed conflicts, escalating violence and humanitarian crises are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and marginalised, with people who use drugs generally being pushed to the very back of the queue for any emergency support offered to civilians in those contexts.

At the same time, the rise in authoritarian regimes and far-right powers across Europe, as well as in North America with the recent re-election of Donald Trump, does not bode well for the future of protecting human rights, while civil society space continues to face more and more restrictions. In the Netherlands (so long a global champion of progressive drug policies), our long-term member organisation Mainline is facing drastic budget cuts from the Dutch Government, while in Serbia NGOs such as DPNSEE and others are being threatened by the possibility of yet another ‘foreign agent law’ similar to that in Russia, Georgia and elsewhere in the region.

On the ground, as we were preparing our ‘Shadow Report’ for the 2024 Midterm Review in Vienna, IDPC members reported an alarming rise in human rights abuses committed in the name of drug control across all regions. In all corners of the world, people continue to be denied access to essential medicines for pain relief and palliative care (as emphasized by the INCB in its own message for International Human Rights Day), while life-saving harm reduction and treatment services remain too limited, underfunded, and under constant threat of closure. As the toxic and unpredictable drug supply is driving overdose deaths, harm reduction and safer supply is becoming more urgent.

Punitive drug control is also responsible for widespread cases of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, record numbers of people being executed for drug offences, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances with complete impunity. State surveillance and the use of new technologies such as databases and mass surveillance campaigns are being increasingly used in drug control, with the inevitable violations on digital rights and the right to privacy, among many others. As always, it is people from specific ethnicities, genders and living in poverty who remain the most targeted and impacted by such punitive drug policies.

The reversal of decriminalisation policies in places like Oregon (USA) and British Columbia (Canada) this year has also been a major cause for concern for the advocates who have been promoting this policy for decades.

Nevertheless, even in the midst of this bleak panorama, there has been important progress in the area of human rights which we must celebrate. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has led the charge in promoting a rights- and health-based approach to drug policy across the UN system, with the High Commissioner himself attending the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in person for the first time in March. Last week, Volker Türk also called for sensible regulation at the European Harm Reduction Conference in Warsaw.

In parallel, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health produced a landmark report entirely dedicated to harm reduction, drug use and the right to health in June, with a second report published in October - with clear recommendations on the need to scale up and fund a large array of harm reduction services, to decriminalise drug use and related activities, to legally regulate drugs, and to review the UN drug control regime to ensure that it is aligned with harm reduction and the operationalisation of the right to health. These reports were mentioned in the drugs ‘omnibus’ resolution which was adopted by consensus last month at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly. In a major win, it is the first time that a drugs ‘omnibus’ resolution adopted by consensus does not include any language on the unrealistic and harmful goal of achieving a ‘society free of drug abuse’.

UN human rights treaty bodies are also increasingly taking on the issue of drug policy within their work. This is particularly the case of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In September alone, the Committee urged eight countries to ensure access to harm reduction and/or to decriminalise people who use drugs.

Importantly, the rights of Indigenous Peoples took the centre stage this year thanks to the initiation of a critical review of the coca leaf by the World Health Organization. Requested by Bolivia with the support of Colombia, this review is a first step in an attempt to address the colonial legacy of the global drug control framework and align it with human rights, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples to cultivate, trade and use a plant that has been part of their ancestral, cultural and religious heritage for millennia.

At an unprecedented 67th CND session in March, Member States finally approved a resolution including the term ‘harm reduction’ after the first CND vote on a resolution in four decades. This is a major win, of course, but this recognition is also coming far too late, just 23 years after the term was first agreed at the UN General Assembly. Still, the discussions around the human rights implications of drug policy at the CND are gathering pace, mainly thanks to the tireless work of IDPC’s network of members and allies, and to the increasing presence of UN human rights experts in Vienna.

However, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) - the lead UN agency on drug-related matters - continues to be alarmingly out of step with the rest of the UN system. Despite repeated calls from IDPC and partners, this year will see yet another International Human Rights Day where UNODC’s Executive Director Ghada Waly maintains a deafening silence in the face of blatant human rights abuses. The 2024 World Drug Report (launched in June) is also emblematic of this disconnect - showcasing the UNODC’s inability to recognise the serious harms of criminalisation, or to even use the term ‘harm reduction’ in a special chapter dedicated to the right to health in the context of drug use.

At a time when global leadership on human rights is becoming all the more critical, the UNODC continues to disregard global evidence of the failures of prohibition and the need to promote and protect human rights across all spheres of the UN.

As IDPC, we now look to 2025, and the key battles ahead as we continue to advocate for drug policies that are truly grounded in social justice and human rights.