ADF focuses on preventing the harms associated with illicit drugs and alcohol in Australia.

"Alcohol and Drug Foundation" se enfoca en prevenir los daños asociados al consumo de drogas ilícitas y de alcohol en Australia.

"Alcohol and Drug Foundation" vise à prévenir les risques associés à la consommation de drogue et d’alcool.

Alcohol and Drug Foundation (former Australian Drug Foundation)

To: Ms Ghada Waly, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Subject: Open letter on UNODC statement on International Human Rights Day 2021

We urge you to mark International Human Rights Day 2021 by calling on Member States to change drug policies and practices that violate human rights and perpetuate inequality and discrimination.

We are writing to you ahead of International Human Rights Day 2021, which will take place on the 10th December amidst escalating global demands for the reform of laws and practices that entrench racial discrimination and social inequality, including drug policies. Last year, IDPC – together with dozens of other civil society and community organisations – called on you to issue a statement on International Human Rights Day urging Member States to change drug laws and practices that undermine health and human rights. A year later, we ask you to seize this day as an opportunity to show UNODC´s alignment with other UN entities in calling for an end to drug policies and practices that perpetuate inequality and discrimination, and violate human rights.

For decades, punitive drug policies have driven widespread human rights abuses, as has been amply documented by the UN. These include the death penalty for drug offences; extrajudicial killings; arbitrary detention, often masquerading as ‘rehabilitation’; the denial of access to life-saving harm reduction services; widespread barriers to accessing controlled medicines for pain relief; the criminalisation of people who use drugs, subsistence farmers and others groups in situations of vulnerability; corporal punishment; and mass incarceration. In all of these cases, draconian drug policies have disproportionately affected people marginalised on the basis of their gender, race, ethnicity, and economic status, thus entrenching inequality and discrimination.

Along 2021, a broad range of UN entities called on Member States to reform drug policies with discriminatory outcomes. In June 2021, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released a landmark study on arbitrary detention and drug polices, which found that ´

the war on drugs may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people. Its impact is often greatest on those who are poor, but also frequently overlaps with discrimination in law enforcement directed at vulnerable groups

´. At the same time, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a new ‘Agenda towards transformative change for racial justice and equality´, highlighting that ´

The discriminatory application of criminal law must be tackled at every stage, including by reforming drug-related policies

´. The High Commissioner´s proposal led to Human Rights Council Resolution 47/21, which contains key commitments to uproot systemic racism in the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. The Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS, adopted in June 2021, also showcased the international community´s commitment to ending inequalities as a step towards ending AIDS. Lastly, the new UN system Common Position on Incarceration, led by UNODC in partnership with other UN entities, notes ‘

the overrepresentation of minority and marginalized groups among prisoners, many of whom are charged with petty and nonviolent offences

support reform efforts aimed at ensuring proportionate and individualized sentencing and alternatives to conviction or punishment in appropriate cases, including for minor drug-related offences

These various commitments emerging across the United Nations are aligned with the 2018 Chief Executives Board’s UN System Common Position on drug-related matters, which makes clear that ‘

should be designed and implemented by States in accordance with their human rights obligations

’, and commits all UN agencies, including UNODC, to support drug policies ‘

that put people, health, and human rights at the centre

Similar human rights concerns have been highlighted in the just-released Global Drug Policy Index, which measures and ranks the national drug policies of 30 countries according to how well they align with the UN system Common Position on Drugs and its Task Team report of March 2019.

The theme of the 2021 International Human Rights Day is ‘Equality: Reducing inequalities, advancing human rights’, and is aimed at ´

addressing and finding solutions for deep-rooted forms of discrimination that have affected the most vulnerable people in societies

´. As such, it presents a crucial opportunity for UNODC to align itself with other UN entities in calling for the end of policies that perpetuate inequality and discrimination, while highlighting its commitment to the promotion of human rights, in line with the UN system Common Positions.

It is in this context that we urge you to issue a strong statement on International Human Rights Day, calling on states to change the drug laws, policies and practices that violate health and human rights, and entrench inequality. To be credible, such a statement should explicitly acknowledge the disproportionate impact of drug laws and drug control on people marginalised on the basis of their gender, race, ethnicity, and economic status, and urge Member States to:

Abolish the death penalty in all circumstances. Imposing capital punishment for drug offences has been found to be contrary to international human rights law by the Human Rights Committee, and the Human Rights Council.

Put an immediate end to extrajudicial killings committed in the name of drug control, as has been repeatedly called for by the Human Rights Council and UN human rights experts.

Permanently close compulsory drug detention centres, including those that masquerade as ‘rehabilitation’, and implement voluntary, evidence-informed, and rights-based health and social services, as recently called for by sixteen UN agencies, including UNODC.

Stress the urgent need to provide accessible, affordable, and adequately funded harm reduction services in community and closed settings, to fulfil the right to health and the right to life of people who use drugs, as demanded by several UN human rights bodies and experts. This is also central to UNODC’s core role as lead UNAIDS co-sponsor regarding prisons and HIV amongst people who use drugs.

Take immediate measures to address prison overcrowding, as already recommended by UNODC and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, by promoting alternatives to incarceration, and ensuring proportionate sentencing for all drug offences, including by taking into account mitigating factors – in line with the basic principle that prisons should only be used as a last resort in all circumstances.

Ensure that people who use drugs are not subject to arbitrary detention, torture, or ill-treatment – whether in state custody or public or private drug services. While under detention, people with a drug dependence or health problems associated with their drug use must be offered evidence-based treatment, harm reduction and other drug services on a strictly voluntary basis.

Promote the end of all punishment for drug use, and drug possession and cultivation for personal use, as permitted within the three drug control conventions. Such policy shifts will help to end the stigma, criminalisation, and exclusion faced by people who use drugs, and to facilitate access to health and social services, as called for by the UN system Common Position, UNAIDS, and UN human rights bodies.

Make sure that drug policies incorporate a gender-sensitive perspective. This should be done by tailoring drug services to the specific needs of women, and by ensuring that criminal laws take into account the circumstances of women involved in drug offences, as most of them come from backgrounds of poverty, marginalisation, and oppression.

Clearly outline the ways in which UNODC will work to achieve these changes, and the measures being taken to ensure that human rights are effectively embedded as a core strand for all of the Office’s work.

As the lead UN agency in drug-related matters, UNODC has the responsibility to promote drug policies that respect, protect, and fulfil human rights, in a way that is consistent with the standards developed by the UN system, and in line with the commitments set in the UN system Common Positions on drugs and on incarceration. A strong statement in the forthcoming International Human Rights Day would be an important and welcome step to signal UNODC’s unequivocal commitment.

We look forward to discussing these concerns and recommendations with you.

NGOs urge UNODC's Executive Director to mark Human Rights Day with a call to reform drug policies that entrench inequality

LONDON (2nd August 2016) – Civil society groups from across the globe, 

have called on UN drug control authorities to urge an immediate stop to the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines. Since 10th May 2016, more than 700 people have been killed by police and vigilantes in the Philippines for being suspected of using or dealing drugs, as a direct result of recently-elected President Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime within six months.

Until now, however, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) – the UN agencies responsible for global drug control – have failed to condemn the Philippines for these gross human rights violations committed in the name of drug control.

375 non-governmental organisations today sent an open letter to the UNODC Executive Director, Mr. Yury Fedotov, and the INCB President, Mr. Werner Sipp, asking them to take immediate action aimed at putting a stop to the extrajudicial killings.

“We are calling on the UN drug control bodies to publicly condemn these atrocities in the Philippines. This senseless killing cannot be justified as a drug control measure”, said Ann Fordham, Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Consortium. “Their silence is unacceptable, while people are being killed on the streets day after day”, she continued.

The open letter asks the UNODC and the INCB to call on President Duterte to:

Immediately end the incitements to kill people suspected of using or dealing drugs,

Act to fulfil international human rights obligations, such as the rights to life, health, due process and a fair trial, as set out in the human rights treaties ratified by the Philippines,

Promote evidence-based, voluntary treatment and harm reduction services for people who use drugs instead of compulsory rehabilitation in military camps, and

Not to reinstate the death penalty for drug offences.

Senior Research and Communications Officer

*******************************************

Key data on the Philippines drug policy crisis:

President Rodrigo Duterte was elected President on 30th May 2016 and began his presidential term on 30th June. He declared a war on drugs in which both police and civilians are encouraged to kill drug user/traffickers

704 people have been killed between the 10th of May 2016 to the 29th of July 2016 (ABS CBN News)

Communications Office Secretary Martin Andanar said 60,000 drug dependents have surrendered to authorities (Daily Mail).

Statements by international human rights groups:

Amnesty International, 10th May: Philippines: New President should break cycle of human rights violations, not compound them

Amnesty International, 30 June: Philippines: President Duterte must break the cycle of human rights violations

Human Rights Watch, 25th July: President Duterte’s Mixed Messages on Rights in the Philippines

Human Rights Watch, 12th July: Philippine Officials Shrug at Surge in Drug Killings

Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates & Citizen’s Council for Human Rights, 14th July: Stop the bloodshed, human rights defenders tell Duterte

Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates & Citizen’s Council for Human Rights, 14th July: Extra Judicial Killings: Normalizing Criminality Under the Guise of Peace and Order

Drug Policy Alliance, 25th July: Philippines President Makes Good on Pledge to Mass Murder People Who Use or Sell Drugs, Calls for "No Mercy" in State of the Nation Address

Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs & International Network of People Who Use Drugs, July: Philippines: An Entreaty to End the Killing, to End the Poverty and Exclusion

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Over 300 NGOs call on the United Nations to take immediate action on the hundreds of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines

Some Asian countries are dropping punitive approaches in favor of a health-centered approach.

Executions, forced and arbitrary detentions, beatings, whipping, incarceration and hard labor — This is a common face of drug policy in many Asian nations, and one that is looking ever more archaic.

Half a million drug users are held annually in compulsory detention centers in China and Southeast Asia, according to estimates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Arduous physical exercises and military drills are often routine there, as is violence – former detainees described shocks with electric batons and whipping with electric wires to Human Rights Watch.

Roughly 50 to 70 percent of prisoners in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand are in jail for drug-related crimes. In extreme cases, prisoners pay with their lives. Indonesia is currently preparing executions for drug trafficking.

Asia's war on drugs

Civil society groups from all over the world have released a statement condemning governments for failing to acknowledge the devastating consequences of punitive and repressive drug policies as they prepare for a UN summit on the issue next month.

In April 2016, world leaders will gather in New York to decide on the future of global drug policy, at the first UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the topic in two decades. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for this meeting to be a “wide-ranging and open debate that considers all options.” But as the preparations continue this week in Vienna at an annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, it is becoming clear that the ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to rethink the failed ‘war on drugs’ is unlikely to deliver.

Civil society statement - The UNGASS outcome document: Diplomacy or denialism?

The NSW premier, Mike Baird, has dismissed a planned trial of pill testing at music festivals as “ridiculous”. “We are not going to be condoning in any way what illegal drug dealers are doing,” he told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.

His comments follow reports the Sydney doctor Alex Wodak, the president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, wants to begin a privately funded pill testing trial – and is prepared to break the law to do so – to save lives. Wodak and an emergency medical specialist, David Caldicott, say they will begin a privately funded trial with or without the Baird government’s approval. “I am prepared to break the law to save young people’s lives,” Dr Wodak told Fairfax Media.

In January, the New South Wales government threatened to shut down some music festivals after a spate of drug overdoses. The threat followed several people being rushed to hospital suffering suspected drug overdoses at Sydney’s Field Day music festival, which is held on New Year’s Day. More than 180 others were charged with drug offences. There were three drug-related deaths at similar events in 2015.

The NSW premier, Mike Baird, said in January that ministers would be asked to review the regulations for granting permits for events on public land. “Enough is enough, this simply has to stop,” he told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

On Saturday, seven people were charged with drugs offences after the first day of the Secret Garden Music Festival in Camden, south-west of Sydney. Police said they searched more than 100 people at the three-day festival on Friday and those arrested face 11 charges between them. They were all granted conditional bail to appear at Picton Local Court on April 26.

Mike Baird attacks drug experts' vow to trial pill testing even if it breaks the law 

A quarter of a century ago, Asia and the Pacific, home to almost half the population of the planet, were at great risk of a generalized HIV epidemic starting among people who inject drugs.

Just imagine what the health, social and economic costs of that would have been! Thailand had already become the first developing country in the world to experience a generalized HIV epidemic.

This had started among people who inject drugs and then spread to commercial sex workers, their sex partners and then the sex partners of their sex partners. The HIV epidemic in Thailand first started among prisoners who injected drugs but remained undetected while the problem was still only in jails.

Many prisoners were released as part of a Royal amnesty to celebrate the King’s 60th birthday, inadvertently releasing a large number of people recently infected with HIV and at a highly infectious stage.

A sudden increase in the prevalence of HIV

The prevalence of HIV among people who inject drugs increased in the community from 1% to 40% in just ten months. Only a few years later, one in six male military recruits and one in eight pregnant women in the north west of the country had HIV infection.

HIV does not respect national borders so this epidemic then soon spread rapidly in neighboring countries among and from people who were injecting drugs.

In the early 1990s, I participated in a World Health Organisation meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the subject of HIV control among people who inject drugs in Asia. Every country in the region was represented.

It was the first ever official meeting to be held on this subject in Asia, many countries in the region were still ruled by communist governments. One delegate after another got up to read carefully and word-for-word their prepared and approved speech.

It was clear that the national representatives had been ordered to only read their officially approved speech and make no other comments. The meeting ran way behind time. Whether communist or capitalist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or officially atheist, the representative of every country argued that HIV would never be a problem in their country and even if it did become a problem, their country would never accept ‘harm reduction’. I was so depressed by this meeting that I briefly retreated to my room.

Different approaches to drug policy and the Asian HIV epidemic

This edition of Policy Talk reviews current knowledge of new psychoactive substances, a category of substances that is challenging government controls across the world, and compares how health authorities are responding to the challenges, with special reference to Australia and New Zealand.

New psychoactive drugs: No easy answer

New recreational drugs are emerging at an unprecedented rate and represent one of the biggest challenges in the alcohol and other drug field for 2013. In 2011 there were double the number of new drugs detected by the EMCDDA than in 2009.

The latest prevention seminar will examine how clinicians, allied health and youth workers, researchers and policy makers can respond to the questions arising from this phenomenon including:

Can new laws curb the increasing number of new recreational drugs on the market?

How can these drugs be monitored and analysed to determine potential harms?

Should education be provided to warn of the harms?

How can clinicians treat people who use these new drugs?

This free, interactive seminar will give you the opportunity to discuss these issues with the experts.

—Senior Clinician, Peninsula Health Peninsula Drug and Alcohol Program & Addiction Studies Coordinator, Curtin University

—Research Fellow, National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University

The seminar, organised by Australian Drug Foundation, will also be broadcast as a free online webinar for those unable to attend the seminar in Melbourne. One free webinar registration will allow you and or your workplace to listen live to speakers, view presentations and pose your own questions to the panel via the webinar platform or Twitter hashtag #DrugInfo. The seminar will be held at the State Library of Victoria Conference Centre, Entry 3, 179 La Trobe Street, Melbourne.

Register here to take part in the live webinar

For registration queries contact druginfo@adf.org.au or 1300 85 85 84

New and emerging drugs webinar from Melbourne

Within the media and the alcohol and other drug sector there has been considerable debate about the decriminalisation of illegal drugs. This debate is likely to increase in Australia this year following the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use in two states in the USA. This DrugInfo alert provides some background information on the drug law reform debate.

Alcohol and Drug Foundation (former Australian Drug Foundation)

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