RCNF was launched in July 2012 as an urgent reaction to reductions in funding for HIV, persistent human rights abuses against Inadequately Served Populations (ISPs) 1 and a strong corresponding push for greater coordination amongst civil society stakeholders. The slow pace of change in political and funding environments meant that in many parts of the world, Inadequately Served Populations (ISPs) continued to be at a higher risk of HIV infection, illness and death but often faced daunting barriers to treatment, prevention and support services. In this context of rapidly dwindling resources, global and regional civil society networks acting as critical representatives, advocates and coordinators of such communities started ‘falling through the cracks’ of existing financing mechanisms, many suffering acute restrictions on their work, and even closure. There was clearly an urgent need to protect and support the most under-served, vulnerable and disenfranchised communities affected by HIV.

RCNF is a custom-built solution to protect and support the most under-served, vulnerable and disenfranchised communities affected by HIV. Our mission is to enable global and regional civil society networks to scale-up access to prevention, treatment, care and support and to protect the rights of ISPs. Civil society networks play a crucial role in addressing barriers to universal access to HIV-services: they provide training and capacity building, support their members with locally relevant services, and can have a powerful influence on national resource conversations. Networks also play a strong role in advocacy by enabling leadership from communities and populations most affected by HIV and actively advocate for their human rights. When properly resourced and supported, networks are able to influence important policy developments at global, regional and national levels that often lead to more successful and efficient national and local programs – delivered by governments as well as civil society. Our work is still in its infancy and there is much more to be done to ensure that communities lead and no one is left behind.

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

Reaching inadequately served populations 2015

HIV risk behaviors among crystal-meth users might contribute to increasing HIV prevalence rates in Indonesia. Related risks can be reduced if people have access to crystal-meth related health services. Prior to the development of interventions, a comprehensive understanding of structural, social, interpersonal and personal factors related to the use of crystal-meth in Indonesia is crucial. This includes a better understanding of individual and environment factors surrounding drug use and HIV-related risk behaviors, which will allow for the designing of better interventions. This study aims to gain better knowledge on patterns of meth use and its implications on HIV risk and health seeking behavior among crystal-meth users in Indonesia, including a better understanding of on individual and environmental factors shaping drug use.

A qualitative research design was developed with the aim of producing a deeper understanding of the diverse patterns of meth use and its implications for HIV risk and related health seeking behaviors. The study looked at patterns of initiation of meth use, sustained use and attempts of reducing and stopping the use of the drug, and how the drug use influenced users’ behaviors, including daily activities, HIV risk behaviors, exposure to legal problems, as well as users’ social and sexual networks and health seeking behaviors.

It was found that patterns of meth use are dynamic and that its use is influenced by factors a personal, inter-personal and social level, occurring within a specific setting and situated within the informants’ life experience. Initiation of meth use is strongly influenced by the social network during the informants’ youth. Through the network information and or knowledge on the drug, its effects, and availability are provided. Moreover, various forms of assistance may also be provided by the network (e.g. borrowing of money, pawning things, pooling money, or providing drugs). Temporary cessation or relapse may also be influenced by a user’s social network.

Crystal meth in Indonesia

The 26th June is the International Day against Drug Abuse. It is a day that embodies laws and policies that have criminalised, subjugated, excluded, and violated the human rights of people who use drugs and the communities in which they live. It is a day that stands for an ideology that has done untold harms. And it is a day that perhaps well-reflects a difficult half-year in global drug policy.

Not least of all was the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs 2016, with the UNGASS outcome document failing to take into account the needs and human rights of people who use drugs. Indonesia has announced plans for a new round of executions for drug-related offences, while the Philippines' President-elect has made the horrific call for people who use and/or sell drugs to be killed extrajudicially, both by citizens and the police. Then there was the UK introducing a blanket ban on all psychoactive substances.

Though it seems that in many corners of the world things are moving backwards, though the exclusion of the voices of people who use drugs in the formation of law and policy has continued, though the violence, stigma, and discrimination to which people who use drugs are subject have been encouraged, though the criminalisation of people who use drugs in some regions has been ramped up, we must persevere.

On this day, the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) emphasises that people who use drugs are not the problem. We are a fundamental part of the solution, a solution to the so-called ‘world drugs problem’. The problem is not drugs themselves, nor the people who use them. The problem is driven by punitive prohibition; it is driven by criminalisation; it is driven by stigma, discrimination, social exclusion, and violence; it is driven by a systemic denial of human rights to people who use drugs and their communities. And things are beginning to move in the right direction. More countries than ever before are pushing in the direction of drug policy reform; momentum is building for positive change, for an end to prohibition.

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

Support and empowerment for and by people who use drugs

本报告中，国际药品政策联合会（IDPC）根据实证和良 好实践案例提出亚洲关于毒品使用政策的改革建议，即 将刑事定罪和惩罚向公共卫生和减低伤害的方向转变。 报告描述了对毒品使用去罪化的有效途径。报告也探讨 了在亚洲实施的被证实无效的一些方法，如将毒品使用 者拘留在强制中心进行“康复”

本报告旨在为亚洲的政策制定者、立法者、毒品使用者 社群和公民社会组织提供资源。报告的整体目标是提供 让毒品使用者从刑事定罪和惩罚中脱离的步骤指南，使 各国可据此制定毒品政策以达到更好的公共卫生成果。 报告也描述了那些不太有效的毒品政策，如将毒品使用 者拘留在强制拘留中心，强迫尿检、强制登记和其他惩 罚性措施。

随时掌握与药物政策发展相关的最新信息。

解决亚洲地区毒品使用问题的公共卫生方法： 去罪化的原则与实践

The Mainline annual report offers highlights on the activities and projects of the foundation in 2015.

Mainline Annual Report 2015

Recognizing the urgent need for strong, forward-thinking action, and evidence-informed, rights-based, well-resourced, community-led HIV responses, civil society emphatically call for a more progressive vision in the 

2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS

. It is toward this goal that we, the undersigned civil society advocates and organizations, engage with the process of the 

 in good faith and with hope for ending the HIV epidemic by 2020. We seek to align the HIV response to the 2030 Agenda, and were encouraged by the initial (zero) draft of the Political Declaration, and to that end commend the co-facilitators (H.E. Jürg Lauber from Switzerland and H.E. Mwaba Patricia Kasese Bota from Zambia) and recognize the efforts made by many member states to secure a bold and progressive vision and set of commitments.

Civil society and communities declaration to end HIV: Human rights must come first

This is the second annual edition in our 

 series produced by Penal Reform International, describing key global trends in the use and practice of imprisonment and the pressing challenges facing states that wish to organise their penitentiary systems in accordance with international norms and standards.

Topics include for example: developments in international criminal justice policy; notable changes to policy at the national level; prison population trends; prison management issues (eg. security and violence, radicalisation, corrections in fragile and conflict states, corruption) and new technologies. The 2016 also has a new section on the provision of food in prisons, with some representative data on food expenditure.

Significant international developments and recent research projects are highlighted throughout.

The report also includes a Special Focus pull-out section – 

Working in a prison requires specific skills, but prison staff can be poorly paid, under‑trained and experience high levels of work‑related stress and violence. This special feature provides a global perspective on prison staff recruitment, pay and conditions, professional training, and issues relating to their health, safety and well‑being.

Global Prison Trends 2016

This publication is a chapter from a four-part Report, Roadmaps to Regulation: Cannabis, Psychedelics, MDMA, and NPS, that will be published later this year. The Report was convened by Amanda Feilding, and principally funded by the John Paul Getty Jr. Foundation with further assistance from the Open Society Foundations (OSF).

The Report aims to bring together the best available evidence on the regulation of psychoactive drugs in a rigorous, yet accessible way. In part, it is an invitation to think differently about drug policy options.

The wealth of expertise that we have gained from our work in the drug policy field strengthens our conviction that the strict legal regulation of drugs is the ultimate goal of drug policy reform. The governments of the world, duty-bound to safeguard their citizens’ well-being, surely would do a better job of minimising the overall harms of drugs than the criminal organisations currently profiting from the illicit market. It is no longer acceptable to simply assume that the risks of a legal market will exceed those of prohibition, especially when there is already the beginnings of a scientific evidence-base to show that a regulated market can provide effective ways of reducing harms. In view of this, the Report was established to provide policymakers with tools to move beyond the blanket application of reactive prohibition. Our aim is to provide guidelines for considering the best available evidence, and for utilising this knowledge in supporting decisions about how to move forward with the complicated issues surrounding the regulation of different categories of psychoactive substances.

Roadmaps to regulation - New psychoactive substances

The current prescription opioid and heroin overdose epidemic has brought greater attention to injection drug use in public spaces. A recent New York Times article noted incidents of public injecting reported by local media in several states, stating:

“With heroin cheap and widely available on city streets throughout the country, users are making their buys and shooting up as soon as they can, often in public places. Police officers are routinely finding drug users — unconscious or dead — in cars, in the bathrooms of fast-food restaurants, on mass transit and in parks, hospitals and libraries.”1

Public injecting poses a significant policy challenge for public health and safety. Injecting in public spaces has been associated with greater risk of overdose and HIV transmission. Many people who use drugs are unable to use them in safe and private environments but instead must turn to venues such as public bathrooms, empty warehouses, and parks. The reasons are complex. Drug use is both illegal and stigmatized; some people who use drugs are homeless, unstably housed or risk loss of housing if found using drugs. This lack of privacy and dignity, particularly when drugs are injected, compromises the health, wellbeing and safety of the people injecting the drugs and of the surrounding community.

Reducing public injection of drugs requires a multipronged approach ranging from accessible drug treatment to affordable supportive housing. This consultation on Alternatives to Public Injection was focused on one solution that has been implemented in a number of countries: supervised injection facilities (SIFs), also known as drug consumption rooms. Supervised injection facilities have received increased attention and consideration in recent months. Legislation to support the establishment of SIFs has been introduced in Maryland and California. SIF proposals are actively under discussion in Seattle, WA and Ithaca, NY. Outside of the United States, new SIFs are expected to open in France, Ireland and Canada.

Currently, there are nearly 100 SIFs in operation outside the United States, but as yet no U.S. jurisdiction has established a supervised injection facility. In light of growing policy interest in this strategy, Harm Reduction Coalition collaborated with Open Society Foundation and amFAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research to convene a consultation on Alternatives to Public Injection on September 30, 2015. Representatives from the NYS Department of Health AIDS Institute and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene participated in the consultation, along with stakeholders representing harm reduction, drug user health advocates, law enforcement and social service providers. Harm Reduction Coalition invited experts from several countries to share their various SIF models, planning and policy development process, implementation challenges, and evaluation results.

This report by Harm Reduction Coalition is a summary of the proceedings of the consultation. The report provides insights on the potential role of supervised injection facilities in the United States, and considerations for advancing policy, planning and implementation of SIFs based on experiences in other countries.

Alternatives to public injecting

Civil society organizations (CSOs) in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are the principal partners of government in scaling up the response to HIV and in implementing national policies. In return, CSOs expect endorsement of their work by the governments. Some CSOs face weaknesses and need capacitybuilding in order for them to reach the level of response required for reducing drug-related harm in this region. Substance use and the transmission of HIV are increasing in the MENA region. The limited data available on drug use show that there are approximately 630,000 people who inject drugs (PWID) across the region. The HIV epidemic remains concentrated among PWID and other key populations in the region. Comprehensive harm reduction programs which include prevention, care, and HIV treatment for PWID are being implemented by CSOs. This could not happen without the presence of a conducive environment which has been facilitated by the CSOs, and which aims to lead to a positive response in health policies, and thus to harm reduction programs in some countries in the region. However, based on the international data, antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage remains low in these countries, even if the number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) receiving ART is increasing. This increase can sometimes mask important challenges in equity: in several countries PWID are the most likely to be infected with HIV while being the least likely to be receiving care and ART. Therefore, concentrated efforts need to continue toward the goal of having mainstream harm reduction approaches in region.

Drug policy and harm reduction in the Middle East and North Africa: The role of civil society

Injecting drug use is a global health and social issue from which various health and social harms often arise. These harms include health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis and fatal overdose, as well as social and legal problems, and others. In recent years, an increase in drug use has been reported in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) from the 20 countries covered by the Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association (MENAHRA) is estimated to be around 570,000 (MENAHRA, 2014).

In many countries of the MENA region, unprotected sex and unsafe injecting drug use are the primary drivers of the HIV epidemic. However, the response has not been appropriate to the size of the problem (MENAHRA, 2014).

An estimated 90,000 people who inject drugs are living with HIV/AIDS within the region, which represents an HIV prevalence of over 15 percent in this population. There is also sufficient evidence showing that injecting drug use contributes significantly to the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) epidemic in this region (MENAHRA, 2014).

MENAHRA communication guide on harm reduction

In many countries, very large numbers of people in prison have not been convicted of a criminal offence but are waiting for their guilt or innocence to be established by a court. Some will eventually be acquitted of any crime; all should be presumed innocent.Yet in many cases their period of detention on remand may last months or years. Conditions are often worse than for convicted offenders and in many countries detainees are subject to highly restricted regimes with limitations on visits and on opportunities to take part in education, training or work. Countries with the highest levels of overcrowding also have prison populations with the highest proportions of pre‑trial detainees. In 40 countries more than half of prisoners are held on remand.

Publications from IDPC Members