Last week I attended the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) in Vientiane, Laos under the header “People’s Solidarity against Poverty and for Sustainable Development: Challenging Unjust and Unequal Development, Building States of Citizens for Citizens”. The Transnational Institute (TNI) was part of the International Organising Committee and co-organised several workshops at the Forum. One of them was on “Crop substitution programmes in Northern Burma and Laos-lessons learned in Alternative Development”.

At this session my TNI colleague Kevin Woods gave an overview of the programmes carried out in Burma and Laos and the results they have yielded. Mr Khin Zaw Win, Mr. Lashi La and Mr. Sai Lone presented the impact of alternative development programmes in their regions in Burma (Wa and Kachin state). Under the guise of opium substitution programmes the Chinese government is supporting large scale agro businesses in Northern Burma and Laos. These programmes have very little to do with alternative development. In fact they plunder the natural resources at the costs of the local people. The Chinese corporations aside, the only locals that are benefitting are the local power-holders who first were engaged in the drugs trade and now are making their fortune with these agro-businesses. At the same time the local communities lose their fields, their grazing lands, access to water and with it all possibility for a sustainable livelihood.

The failure of these opium substitution programmes clearly shows the risks of monoculture, the importance of viable sustainable alternatives aimed at the local and domestic market and most importantly the need for the participation of the farming communities from the very beginning in the design and implementation of these programmes. Traditional rights and values have to be included and eradication of poppy fields and strict enforcement of opium bans should only take place when sustainable alternatives are in place.

At the UN level the Member States are hoping to agree on a set of voluntary guiding principles on alternative development at the International Conference on Alternative Development (ICAD) in Peru middle of next month. It is important that the Member States seize this opportunity and base the guidelines on the recommendations put together towards the Lima Conference by the outcomes of the Workshop part of ICAD, attended by AD experts and practitioners. AD can work if the local communities are at the centre and their rights respected.

In this respect the final declaration of the AEPF should also be looked upon as a helpful guideline. In Laos there was a strong consensus among the Asian and European citizens gathered at the AEPF that the dominant approach over the last decades - based around deregulation of markets, increasing power of multinational corporations and unaccountable multilateral institutions – had failed to meet the needs and rights of all citizens.

A long term vision focusing on people-centred policies and practices were called for and it is of vital importance for communities in opium cultivating areas that the ICAD guidelines meet these requirements.

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A message from the Asia-Europe People’s Forum to the International Conference on Alternative Development


The Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, and Surinam are conveniently located for Colombian traffickers shipping cocaine to Europe; there are many direct flights to one of Europe’s busiest airports, Schiphol in Amsterdam. Between 2001 and 2004 cocaine seizures in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles increased dramatically. Confronted with large numbers of people attempting to smuggle drugs by using commercial flights, authorities implemented a “100% control” policy of screening all passengers for drugs on all flights at selected source and destination airports.

Rather than attempting to scare off potential smugglers with the threat of incarceration, the Dutch approach was based on increasing the rate of interdiction to the point that smuggling becomes unprofitable. In other words, the focus was on the drugs, the socalled “substance-oriented approach”, rather than the couriers, and was based on incapacitation of the smuggling route, rather than traditional deterrence by incarceration; and with result.

Alternative measures - The alternative measures implemented in the Schiphol plan of action proved to be a good alternative to the deterrent effect of incarceration. Indeed, for internal couriers medically supervised delivery, followed by release with a travel ban to avoid recidivism is a constructive response aimed at health, rehabilitation and prevention of trafficking. At the same time a huge burden on the prison system and the judicial apparatus can be lifted allowing for more focus on the criminal organisation behind the drug trafficking.

Role as a determining factor for sentencing - The Dutch sentencing guidelines are based on a combination of the role (i.e. mule, or organiser) and the quantity found on the courier. However, body packers and couriers carrying drugs in their luggage are often not informed of the quantity they are smuggling. Physical build determines the quantity mules are able to carry internally; therefore it is arbitrary to punish only on the basis of quantity. It would therefore make sense to weigh the role of the courier, his/her position and responsibility in the operation, heavier than quantity when considering a sentence.

Drug couriering prevention - It has been proven that a substance-oriented approach is effective as a preventive measure against drug trafficking by couriers from the Dutch Antilles, Aruba, Surinam and Venezuela.

It is regretful the Dutch government abandoned this approach as soon as the numbers of couriers dropped to a level within the capacity of the judicial system and that they chose to resume the deterrent approach of incarceration, the effectiveness of which can be questioned. According to UNODC and the World Bank “this reluctance to promote substance–oriented interdiction is unfortunate, because the 100% control experiment represents an innovation worthy of further promotion and testing.”

After conventional methods proved unfit to address the enormous flow of drug couriers to Schiphol Airport the Dutch government chose a new approach focusing on the substance and aimed at incapacitating the trafficking route. At the same time the judicial system was spared from the huge number of drug courier cases. With the help of pre-flight checks the routes were incapacitated with an immediate effect: the number of couriers going to Schiphol airport decreased dramatically within months. The cooperation with airlines on blacklists for couriers proved to be helpful in countering local recidivism.

Unfortunately the success of the Schiphol Plan of Action also proved that taking out one trafficking route does not decrease the amount of cocaine smuggled into a country, let alone to Europe as a destination area. The 100% controls did not succeed to have a significant impact on the availability, purity or price of cocaine in the Netherlands or Europe as a whole. The Plan probably contributed to shifting trafficking routes to more vulnerable countries with weak institutions such as those in West Africa. We must ask, what can be done to prevent this shift of routes to other, more vulnerable countries with little to no resources to counter the negative consequences of increased corruption and violence that go together with drug trafficking?

As is the case with any other supply reduction effort, also this Plan has not been able to influence the availability of drugs. Sustainable market changes require a decrease in demand. Meanwhile negative consequences of interdiction need to be avoided as much as possible and the substance-oriented approach represents one of the more human friendly approaches

TNI Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies No. 7 - A matter of substance: Fighting drug trafficking with a substance-oriented approach

On 16th October 2008 Members of the European Parliament and national Parliamentarians met through an initiative of the Transnational Institute and the Andreas Papandreou Foundation at the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss the ongoing review of the goals and targets adopted at the United Nations General Assembly's Special Session on Drugs in 1998. The meeting aimed to increase the involvement of Parliamentarians in the decision making process occurring in advance of the 52nd Session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March 2009. For the full report of this meeting and further details please see the attached documents

Open Letter to the Expert Meeting on Drug Policy at the European Parliament

Ernestien Jensema is a social anthropologist who has been working on drug policy reform since 2002. In 2008 she joined the Drugs and Democracy Programme at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam as researcher and project coordinator. Together with her colleagues she advocates for evidence based drug policies guided by the principles of harm reduction and human rights for users and producers.

Ernestien Jensema es antropóloga social y trabaja en la reforma de las políticas de drogas desde 2002. En 2008 se incorporó al Programa Drogas y Democracia del Transnational Institute de Ámsterdam como investigadora y coordinadora de proyectos. Junto con sus colegas, aboga por políticas de drogas basadas en pruebas y guiadas por los principios de reducción de daños y derechos humanos para personas usuarias y productoras.

Ernestien Jensema est une socio-anthropologue qui travaille sur la réforme de la politique des drogues depuis 2002. En 2008, elle a rejoint le programme "Drogues et démocratie" du Transnational Institute d'Amsterdam en tant que chercheuse et coordinatrice de projet. Avec ses collègues, elle plaide en faveur de politiques de drogues fondées sur des données probantes et guidées par les principes de la réduction des risques et des droits humains pour les personnes usagères et engagées dans la production.

Ernestien Jensema

IDPC Board member

Translations

Related Content

A message from the Asia-Europe People’s Forum to the International Conference on Alternative Development

TNI Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies No. 7 - A matter of substance: Fighting drug trafficking with a substance-oriented approach

Open Letter to the Expert Meeting on Drug Policy at the European Parliament