This side event at centres the rights and experiences of families of people deprived of liberty, highlighting the impact of incarceration on women, children and adolescents.
The Working Group on Women, Drug Policy and Incarceration analyses how punitive drug policies have driven the incarceration of women in Latin America and proposes gender-sensitive and intersectional responses.
Acción Andina and the Programa Libertas outline how punitive practices and prohibitionist logics persist in Bolivia, highlighting the voices of surviving victims.
In a first for the Commission on the Status of Women, the text explicitly recognises women in prison, opening possibilities for justice for nearly one million women incarcerated globally.
UN experts warn that the growing number of women imprisoned globally is driven largely by punitive drug policies and socio-economic inequalities, urging States to prioritise alternatives to detention and gender-responsive justice reforms ahead of CSW70.
UN experts raised serious concerns about implementation gaps, including conditions and coercive practices in drug rehabilitation centres operating without adequate oversight.
Thailand’s February election could reshape drug policy, provided the next government advances evidence- and human rights–based approaches, expands harm reduction, and moves beyond policing-led responses.
This event will examine key human rights standards on access to health and harm reduction in prisons, while sharing lessons learned from regional and international advocacy experiences.
Marie Nougier exposes how punitive drug laws devastate women’s lives, fueling mass incarceration and inequality — and calls for feminist, humane, evidence-based drug policies rooted in care, not punishment.
