RightsCon 2023

In 2023, RightsCon will be a hybrid convening taking place in San José, Costa Rica and online through the RightsCon platform, from Monday, June 5 to Thursday, June 8. The venue for in-person participants is the Costa Rica Convention Center, a bioclimatic, eco-friendly, and sustainably-designed space located near the airport and just outside the city center.

The RightsCon platform, which we have used since 2020, will host the full program as well as provide access to online programming with features that enable networking between participants including one-on-one and group chats, and creative spaces for connecting and socializing. The platform will use different video streaming and conferencing services, including Vimeo, Zoom, and Frameable (previously Social Hour).

IDPC organises the following event:

Racialised surveillance and the ‘war on drugs’: avenues for resistance against expanding policing technologies

Co-organised by IDPC with European Digital Rights (EDRi) and the Latin American Network of People Who Use Drugs (LANPUD)

Thursday, 8 June | 12:45 (Costa Rica)
Hybrid event – Register for in-person participation here, or for a free online ticket here.

For decades, punitive drug policies have provided legal backing for state violence directed at marginalised groups pushed into vulnerability, including people living in poverty, racialised groups, and women and gender non-conforming people (for more information, see the Global Drug Policy Index). As a result, groups experiencing intersecting forms of oppression have disproportionately experienced criminalisation and incarceration, the denial of basic human rights, and police violence and intimidation. Despite overwhelming evidence on the harms of punitive approaches to drug policy, states are increasingly reliant on surveillance technologies to maintain and expand drug control, including by maintaining registers of people who use drugs surveilling social media (sometimes taking down life-saving harm reduction content, or imposing electronic tags that detect drug use on people under parole).

These developments risk further exacerbating the harms experienced by hyper- policed and under-protected communities, deepening exclusion and marginalisation. The conversation among drug policy reform advocates on this worrying issue is only nascent, and there is a clear need to learn from other human rights movements about the implications of the rise in the use of surveillance technologies by state actors, as well as how to resist this new form of control of particularly marginalised and vulnerable groups. This session will provide a space for dialogue among human rights advocates to reflect on strategies of resistance against the surge in surveillance technologies by the state and how these could be applied in the field of drug policy.

Speakers

• Ernesto Cortés Amador, ACEID / LANPUD
• Adrià Cots Fernández, IDPC
• Melissa Moore, Drug Policy Alliance
• Niamh Eastwood, Release
• Sarah Chander, European Digital Rights (EDRi)