Human rights for people who use drugs in South Africa

The Dutch organisation Mainline's partners in South Africa, TB/HIV Care and OUT Well-being, worked on delivering harm reduction services and have established the first needle and syringe programmes in three South African cities.

Human rights violations are commonly experienced by people who use drugs. Prior to service delivery, the Step Up Project ran a number of community consultation workshops which confirmed that drug-using communities were experiencing human rights violations. In a national consultative workshop facilitated by UNODC in late 2014, the abuse of human rights was identified as the biggest concern for people who inject drugs. In February 2015 Mainline ran a number of training workshops to enable peer outreach workers to act as paralegals. An initial form was developed and subsequently refined.

In April 2015 a human rights violations project plan was developed. In late June 2015 limited service delivery began, and in July 2015 full service delivery, including a needle and syringe distribution and collection program, started. This report is therefore the first quarterly report for the human rights violations project plan.

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