Civil society space – Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Summary

The present report is submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 59/10, in which the Council requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a thematic report in follow-up to the report containing practical recommendations for the creation and maintenance of a safe and enabling environment for civil society, based on good practices and lessons learned, to review progress against the recommendations contained therein, to identify new and emerging trends concerning civil society space, including through an analysis of the specific contribution and risks faced by underrepresented parts of civil society, and to provide an updated set of recommendations in the light of those trends.

The report identifies key challenges and new and emerging trends affecting civic space, online and offline, including key gaps and practices, and puts forward recommendations for States and the human rights ecosystem

The impact of punitive drug policies on civil society organisations

The report explicitly recognises how prohibitionist and militarised drug policies restrict civic space, particularly for organisations working on harm reduction and human rights.

As highlighted in paragraph 26:

Civil society reported that prohibitionist, and in some contexts, militarized approaches to drug control policy had negatively impacted the space for civil society working on related issues. For example, civil society noted that “anti-drug propaganda” provisions – laws restricting information perceived as promoting drug use, including harm reduction content – narrowed freedom of expression and access to information, including for health and human rights actors. Similarly, they denounced the fact that the securitization of drug policy had driven health and human rights organizations to the sidelines and had redirected funding towards punitive law enforcement approaches, rather than evidence-based, rights-centred interventions such as harm reduction.

These findings draw directly on contributions from the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association and the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), referenced in footnotes 42 and 43 of the report.