HCLU is a human rights watchdog with the objective of building and strengthening civil society and rule of law in Hungary and the Central Eastern European region.

El HCLU es un perro guardián de los derechos humanos encargado de desarrollar y fortalecer la sociedad civil y el estado de derecho en Hungría y en la CEE.

Le HCLU est un organe de surveillance des droits humains qui a pour objectif la construction et le renforcement de la société civile et de la règle de droit en Hongrie et dans la CEE.

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)


István Gábor Takács and Péter Sárosi have been making films to promote humane drug policies and harm reduction since 2007. While working at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, they started out with a handycam and a microphone to record conferences and interviews with experts in the field. Their online videos became popular educational and mobilisation tools, and throughout the years they were invited to film all around the world about best practices of drug policy, to support activist with videos and to debunk the drug war.

In 2016 they founded a new organisation, the Rights Reporter Foundation, where they continued their international filmmaking work as well. They document the major international drug policy events, at the United Nations and at conferences, they produce short informational videos and full length documentaries, for which they received multiple awards. They train fellow activists in media communication and video advocacy, and maintain and support a network of videographers who are working to promote human rights, harm reduction and sane drug policies. In this presentation István Gábor Takács, video manager of the RRF tells the story of their work, and shows examples of how they used video as an effective advocacy and educational tool to advance drug policy reform around the world.

check out their work here : https://drogriporter.hu/en/
and here : https://www.facebook.com/drugreporter/

Video advocacy for drug policy reform

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

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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

The governments of the world are preparing for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs, in April this year - the first of its kind since 1998. Unfortunately, as I wrote in my previous essay on UNGASS, our politicians are far from accepting the reality that drugs are here to stay, and that it's time to change the punitive paradigm to a harm reduction paradigm. There is no hope that the international drug conventions - the cornerstone of global drug control - will be amended. The most we can expect is an outcome document which takes a stand against human rights abuses, speaks up for harm reduction, and is adopted with the meaningful involvement of civil society.

After several months of negotiation, the UNGASS board has come out with the first draft of the outcome document to be discussed and adopted in April by the member states. This document is a bitter disappointment for all of us who, in previous years, have invested our time and energy in advocacy around UN drug policies. Not because of what is included, but because of what is missing from the document - namely, any mention of harm reduction as such, or any specific harm reduction interventions, including needle and syringe programs, opiate substitution treatment or overdose prevention programs. As Harm Reduction International points out in its statement, this is not only a failure to move forward in the fight for a greater acceptance of harm reduction, but a significant step backwards from previously agreed language.

UNGASS without harm reduction? No way! 

Unlike other countries from the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia is experimenting with drug policy in order to improve the public health response to drug use. After almost two decades of advocacy and preparatory legal work, a drug consumption room (DCR) pilot project was launched in Ljubljana, in 2015, by the local NGO, 'Stigma'.

At a regional drug policy conference that took place recently in Belgrade, Re Generation representatives introduced the Room for Change campaign, and spoke about our aim of stimulating public debate about opening a drug consumption room in Serbia. One of the participants, a government official from the Slovenian Ministry of Health, told the audience in his speech that Slovenia was piloting a drug consumption room program in Ljubljana. Usually, such important drug policy changes – significant though they may be for drug policy activists and experts – receive a sceptical welcome from the general public, and are followed by campaigns and enormous media coverage in the Balkans region. In this particular case, however, instead of media promotion, the Slovenian Ministry of Health and the initiating local civil society organisation, 'Stigma', developed their cooperation outside the media limelight. Based on their good coordination, the legal framework was set up, and funds were allocated for this evidence-based public health program.

First drug consumption room pilot program launched in Slovenia

Around the world, the discussion surrounding the need to broaden access to harm-reduction programs is reaching ever greater numbers of people. In Western countries, this approach is a priority in dealing with drug use. Flagship harm-reduction programs, such as needle and syringe exchanges, substitution therapy, and safe injection rooms, are used in the majority of European countries, in order to prevent transmission of blood-borne diseases, improve the health of people living with addiction to psychoactive substance, increase safety in cities, and reduce related criminal behavior.

Watch the Polish Drug Policy Network & Drugreporters joint video on the Polish situation

The experience of those countries, linked to public demand for safer streets, and a growing number of people seeking treatment, is what made them pursue harm reduction, including the reduction of crime associated with drug-use. The best example is the Swiss model, where a pilot program introduced medicinal heroin treatment for people with opiate addiction. Just a few years later, a significant improvement in the health of the patients was evident; criminal behavior by addicts plunged (from 90 percent to 10 percent), while the operation of the clinics cost the state significantly less than the costs related to treatment with ineffective methods, or isolation of heroin users in prisons.

Where do poles inject? The “Room for Change” campaign in Poland

A Drug Policy Reform Conference, organizada pela Drug Policy Alliance, foi sediada em Washington DC entre os últimos dias 18 e 21. O evento, que acontece a cada 2 anos, trouxe inúmeros especialistas de diversos países para discutir políticas de drogas e propor alternativas para a guerra às drogas.

Este ano, a conferência tocou em diversos temas como a reforma da justiça criminal, o superencarceramento, a legalização da maconha, uso seguro e programas de redução de danos, estudos científicos com psicodélicos, o papel da mídia na reforma da política de drogas, o impacto da política norte-americana de drogas a nível global, entre outros assuntos, sempre sob a ótica da liberdade e da justiça social.

Registe-se para recever as Alertas mensais do IDPC e obter informação sobre questões relacionadas com as políticas de drogas.

Assista a um resumo da Drug Policy Reform Conference 2015

The 2015 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organised by the Drug Policy Alliance, was held in Washington DC between 18-21 November.

Drugreporter by Hungarian Civil Liberties Union was again the official film maker of the event.

Peter Sarosi blogs about the event, writing about the early days of this biannual conference, and how far the world has come since then. But he also quotes Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who reminded the conference attendants that progress entails a risk of losing sight of the core values that started the fight in the first place. After a US American movement towards decriminlisation through medical cannabis and in some states even recreational cannabis legal regulation, it may seem like a global solution to the world drug problem is near, and the debate is on the table about what comes next. However, there are still many problems to be solved. People fear that their ideals will be sacrificed on the altar of big business, that vulnerable communities will be left behind, and especially people in non-Western countries do not benefit from US decriminalisation steps in any way, while abuse and punishment remain an every day reality.

Drug policy reform conference 2015 - A movement for freedom

On October 19th, Richard Branson, the head of Virgin and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, blogged about a United Nations paper (find it below the article!). He claimed that it had been suppressed by a powerful member state (probably the US) because it supported the decriminalisation of drug use - that is, the abolition of criminal sanctions directed against people who use drugs. The paper had been prepared by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and was intended for publication at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The paper encourages member states “to use non-penal, public health measures to address drug dependence and drug use” and to provide alternatives to punishment for small-scale distributors (pushers) as well. It uses entirely logical arguments, consistent with international law and scientific evidence.

People were whispering in the corridors of the conference that before publication, the agency had already sent out the paper, under embargo, to a selected group of journalists. Maybe one of these journalists called the White House for comment, the gossip ran, and a high-level drug control official effectively suppressed its publication – although there is no way, at present, to know for certain whether this is true or not. The UNODC itself, in a press statement, claimed never to have intended to publish the paper in Kuala Lumpur, and to have only prepared it “for dissemination and discussion”. Well, the organisers of the conference took them at their word: They invited conference paticipants to discuss and endorse the document. Luckily, the Drugreporter video crew was there to film what happened, and to obtain comments from some key professionals and activists.

More and more UN officials, international organisations, and member states support decriminalisation. The latest example is Ireland - its Minister of Drugs having announced last Monday that his government plans to open drug consumption rooms and remove sanctions against drug users from its criminal code. The reason is simple, it's not rocket science. The suppressed UN paper explains it all in detail, but it can be summarised in one simple sentence: criminalisation doesn't work, and it harms our society. It generates costs beyond mere money, suffering beyond the intentions of most people who support it. Too many young people have to die, when (for fear of arrest) they or their friends don't call for help if one of them overdoses. Too many people are infected with Hepatitis C or HIV, because they are afraid to access needle and syringe programs. Too many people in poor neighborhoods have to suffer from drug litter because drug users feel forced to discard their needles in order to avoid arrest. Too many policemen use drug laws as a pretext to stigmatise people who are poor, or who belong to minority groups. Too many young people lose all faith in the rule of law, when they can be punished simply for what they put into their own bodies. Too many precious financial resources are allocated to ineffective law enforcement interventions - resources that could be used to fund life-saving programs.

Video: Decriminalisation is not rocket science – the UN must endorse it!

Issue 3, the cannabis legalisation initiative in Ohio, failed on Tuesday. This may appear surprising in the middle of a wave of support for marijuana legalisation, but it does not mean that the people of Ohio opted for prohibition. According to polls, a majority supported the legal regulation of cannabis. They only rejected the concept of a constitutionally-mandated oligopoly to control the legal cannabis market. Issue 3 would have introduced a system whereby only a few large companies were permitted to grow and distribute marijuana. The initiative divided drug policy reformers in North America. The Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project abstained from endorsing the measure, but NORML, the oldest marijuana reform organisation, offered a grudging endorsement, with the reservation that an oligopoly was a bad idea.

As Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance, wrote in his CNN opinion piece, “There's something in a constitutionally-mandated oligopoly for an agricultural product, that just seems un-American”. Well, as a European, I think there's also something very un-European about it. It simply seems unfair to restrict marijuana production to a handful of big corporations, when that restriction can only be modified by amending the constitution. Allocation of licences should be done by fair and open competition.

The supporters of Issue 3 also had valid arguments on their side. Marc Emery, the self-proclaimed Canadian 'Prince of pot', wrote, on his Facebook page, “We fight to stop arrest and punishment and prison. Any measure that moves us from complete prohibition to less prohibition / legalisation, thats what an activist does. A true activist cannot stop that consistent and worthy goal, just because someone they don't approve of is unworthy or undeserving in making money.”

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