Adolescent girls and young women, women living with HIV and women from populations most affected by HIV face significant barriers accessing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services, including HIV prevention, treatment and care services.

Gender inequality manifests in harmful gender norms, genderbased violence (GBV) and women’s lack of access to and control of resources. These restrict women’s and girls’ ability to make decisions related to their sexual and reproductive health. Intimate partner violence and limited sexual decision making, forced or coerced sexual debut, poverty, limited access to sexuality education, and cultural taboos reduce women’s control over when, how and with whom they have sex, and therefore their ability to protect themselves from HIV and unintentional pregnancy. Stigma and discrimination related to age, gender, sexuality, gender identity and HIV status also present barriers to realising their SRHR.

Acting on HIV to achieve sustainable development goal 5: gender equality 

For a while there, it appeared that Thailand and the military regime were preparing to take new steps to update the worn and losing campaign against illicit drugs. Instead, the people in charge of reforming and modifying policies have largely doubled down on the old ones. The losing ways of the country's war on drugs will remain in place and dominate the amended and now patchwork Narcotics Control Bill.

The bill is currently under discussion by the regime-appointed National Legislative Assembly (NLA). The true state of affairs, however, is that the future direction of drug policy is clear. The "new" 183-section law stresses and emphasises the same old steps: crackdowns, raids, arrests, imprisonment. It is as if the regime and its NLA and Constitution Drafting Committee have considered that while drug policies of the past have clearly failed, that is simply a sign that there has not been enough enforcement and prison time.

The good news first, because there isn't much. There are new articles in the now bloated Act that mention drug abuse. Nominally, they allow for reduced penalties instead of the almost mandatory imprisonment of the former bill. The new law, presuming it passes the NLA -- almost a certainty -- will allow for rehabilitation.

Back to the war on drugs in Thailand

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A “dramatic” drop in opium cultivation in Myanmar underscored a regional boom in demand for illegal synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, which many Asian countries are struggling to combat, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday.

The area under opium poppy cultivation dropped by a quarter between 2015 and 2017, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report released on Wednesday.

“The drop in opium production is welcome, but it is not a victory,” Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC’s chief in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told Reuters.

Myanmar's opium crop plummets, but no victory over Asia's narco-boom: U.N.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Pain is only the latest woe in John Bizimungu’s life.

Rwandan by birth, he has lived here as a refugee since his family was slaughtered in the 1994 genocide. A cobbler, Mr. Bizimungu used to walk the streets asking people if he could fix their shoes.

Now, at 75 and on crutches, he sits at home hoping customers will drop by. But at least the searing pain from the cancer that has twisted his right foot is under control.

“Oh! Grateful? I am so, so, so, so grateful for the morphine!” he said, waving his hands and rocking back in his chair. “Without it, I would be dead.”

‘Opiophobia’ has left Africa in agony

By National Institute for Health Research (NIHR Signal)

A combination of providing clean needles and syringes and offering safer oral therapy, such as methadone, reduced the predicted risk of becoming infected with hepatitis C virus by 71%. Providing both services to people who inject drugs was likely to be cost-effective and has the potential to be cost-saving in some parts of the UK, depending on the size of the local population of people who inject drugs and underlying rates of infection.

Current services are estimated to save up to £54 million in costs of treating hepatitis C infection. This is in addition to the savings made from reducing the incidence of HIV infections. This study suggests that if such programmes are decommissioned, the number of new hepatitis C infections would at least double.

This NIHR-funded study combines a review of international evidence with analysis of current usage data from three UK sites, and models the impact of withdrawing or increasing services. The evidence is based on observational studies and modelling so should be interpreted with caution. However, given the nature of the subject, it would be difficult to gather higher quality evidence.

Harm reduction approaches predicted to reduce rates of new hepatitis C infection for people who inject drugs in the UK

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - For the first 18 months of his life, the only home Sopheary's son knew was a cramped prison cell. "The kids would try to shake the window and the door to get out but they couldn't, so they would cry," said Sopheary, whose name has been changed to protect her family's privacy. "It was very chaotic."

Three months pregnant when she was swept up in a drug raid on a karaoke parlour in July 2015, Sopheary denied knowledge of the methamphetamine found on her client but was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, reduced to two on appeal. It was inevitable the baby she was carrying would be born during her sentence. And, with her relatives unable to care for him, his first - and developmentally crucial - months were spent in an adult prison that has become increasingly crowded because of a major government crackdown on drugs. When he was born, "he was so small, like a monkey", Sopheary told Al Jazeera. She blamed his low birth weight on receiving inadequate nutrition from her food rations during her pregnancy. And, like other mothers interviewed for this story, she said she was unable to breastfeed so relied on formula provided by a non-governmental organisation.

Prison budgets allocate just $0.70 per prisoner per day for food (which covers two basic, rice-based meals), and half that for accompanying infants, though local NGOs working closely with prisoners claim the children rarely receive their allowance and pregnant women do not receive any prison-issue nutritional supplements. "We have received reports of mothers returning to the prisons with newborn babies to sleep on cell floors with no assistance with extra food portions, breastfeeding, sanitation and after-birth care," said Naly Pilorge, deputy director of advocacy at the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho).

Locking up babies: Cambodia drug war ensnares children

Legislation to decriminalise drugs, including heroin, cocaine and cannabis, for personal use could be enacted in early 2019, Minister of State for the National Drugs Strategy Catherine Byrne has indicated.

On Thursday, she appointed a working group to look at “alternative approaches to the possession of drugs for personal use”. It will have its first meeting on December 11th.

The group, to be chaired by retired judge Garret Sheehan, is expected to produce its first recommendations by May. Consultations with stakeholders will follow, after which final recommendations will be made “be the end of next year or early 2019” she said. Legislation is likely to follow.

Legislation to decriminalise drugs in Ireland could come in ‘early 2019’

As the proposal moves forward to open the UK’s first drug consumption room (DCR) in Glasgow, here are five key things that naysayers should take note of.

DCRs allow people who use drugs to do so in safe environments, with clean equipment, and in the presence of medical professionals who can prevent them from suffering a fatal overdose. They are furthermore well evidenced in preventing the spread of blood-borne viruses (BBVs) such as HIV and hepatitis C.

Glasgow City Council has said that any such facility must offer "wrap-around services [...] such as primary health care, addictions counselling, and housing and welfare advice" on the premises. Specific details are still being considered for the facility, also, such as the inclusion of an inhalation room for those who smoke drugs.

Five reasons why drug consumption rooms benefit people who don’t use drugs

Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’.

On 15 September 2016, a 46-year-old man slashed his own stomach outside the Georgian Government Chancellery, where dozens had gathered to protest the country’s drug policy. He claimed police had terrorised and pressured him into implicating his friend, a drug user, saying the investigation into his case would not be just.

In 2013, Beso Khutsishvili had just been released from prison where he had served 8 years on drugs charges. Several days after his release, 3 police officers took him to the police station demanding cooperation, he claims.

‘You must help us arrest Lasha Bakhutashvili, they said. Had I refused, they threatened the safety of my children. I didn’t care about myself, but when they mentioned my children… There was nothing human about them, they were totally capable of doing it’, Khutsishvili said, in a video published on 30 May 2016 by the White Noise Movement, a group campaigning for a softer drugs policy.

Khutsishvili says police would take him to the pharmacy to buy precursors, but he would cook the drugs and consume them immediately, to avoid implicating his friend. This continued for a month until he wasn’t able to avoid them any longer, and he was forced to implicate a friend, he explains.

Georgia’s ‘war against the people’ and the war against a broken system

Speakers discuss the growing opioid epidemic in cities across the United States, the influx of inexpensive heroin and potent synthetics such as fentanyl, and the lessons the United States can learn from other countries in curbing the deadly crisis.

The growing U.S. opioid crisis: lessons from around the world

In the UK, men are more likely to try drugs than women and they significantly outnumber women in accessing treatment, reinforcing the view that male drug use is the norm. But there are limitations with the way drug use is calculated and serious issues with women accessing treatment.

Drug policy and the allocation of budgets for drug prevention and treatment are informed by surveys such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The survey shows that twice as many men as women use drugs. However, the survey misses some key groups, such as homeless people and university students. The latter is particularly important as there are more young women in university than men.

Another important group not included in the survey are prisoners. Female offenders are more likely than their male counterparts to use drugs and to report needing help when they enter prison. As a result of these issues, the number of women who use drugs is probably massively underestimated.

Estimates of female drug use matter as we know that women use drugs not just for pleasure but to cope with difficult life circumstances, such as domestic abuse. There are clear links between experiencing abuse and trauma and having problems with drugs and alcohol. The connection between these issues is explored by the authors on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.

Women are thought to progress more rapidly from starting to use drugs to the point where they develop problems, such as dependency – a phenomenon known as “telescoping”. Given this phenomenon, it is concerning that 11- to 15-year-old girls are more likely to drink alcohol or try cigarettes than young boys. Girls also match boys of the same age in their use of drugs.

This rapid journey into a problematic relationship with drugs could be a contributing factor to the significant rise in drug-related deaths among females. Drug-related deaths have risen for men and women over the last decade, but the sharpest rise has been for women. And this rise could be underestimated as coroners are less likely to investigate unnatural deaths in women, compared with men.

Women also use drugs – not that you can tell from drug policy in the United Kingdom

What does good health mean in a context where people who use drugs desperately struggle just to survive another day?

The right to Health has been established as a Right since 1948. Governments and policy makers are well aware of the universal declarations yet they consciously decide to condemn people who use drugs to an early death.

What part of the words ‘Universal’ and ‘Human Rights’ do they not understand?

Many might disagree thinking ‘something is better than nothing’ but we want all of it because it is our right. This is not the future we were promised by our leaders. HIV among people who inject drugs in Asia and the Pacific The Asia and the Pacific Region has the second highest number of people living with HIV in the world and one third of world’s population of people who inject drugs live here. (1) More than one in eight People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) are living with HIV and one out of ten people living with HIV are PWID. (2) Despite the substantial progress in the HIV response, UNAIDS suggests that there was no decline in the annual number of new HIV infections among people who inject drugs between 2010 and 2014. (3)

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