The WHO has upheld the coca leaf’s severe international scheduling, maintaining restrictions despite evidence of its safety and longstanding Indigenous use.
UN experts raised serious concerns about implementation gaps, including conditions and coercive practices in drug rehabilitation centres operating without adequate oversight.
Civil society groups from around the world reject the 'war on drugs' narrative being used to justify pressure, interference, and intervention in Venezuela—warning of militarisation, human rights violations, and dangerous regional precedents.
By recommending that coca remain in the most restrictive category, the WHO has reinforced a decades-old, colonial classification that undermines scientific research and Indigenous rights.
A wave of lethal U.S. airstrikes in Latin America and the Caribbean has sparked international outrage over their legality, human cost, and troubling escalation of punitive drug control.
Despite clear evidence and contravening Indigenous rights, WHO recommends the harshest scheduling for the coca leaf, upholding racist and colonial underpinnings of its ban.
As the 'narcoterrorism' rhetoric is weaponised to intensify the 'war on drugs', this event explores its human rights consequences and the mechanisms needed to ensure accountability and protect international law.
Intersecção discusses how drug prohibition fuels deforestation, violence, and inequality across the region, linking the 'war on drugs' to the global climate crisis and calling for ecological harm reduction and rights-based regulation.