This document illustrates how drug control can be better synchronized with the need to protect human rights. The first three sections outline the conceptual and legal foundations that underpin the human rights aspect of drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice; and the fourth section indicates a way forward to mainstreaming human rights in the work of UNODC.
This report was prepared pursuant to Commission on Narcotic Drugs resolution 49/4, entitled "Responding to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users". It contains an overview of the technical assistance provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to Member States in developing comprehensive demand reduction strategies and measures, including HIV/AIDS prevention and care in the context of drug abuse. The report provides an overview of the global situation with regard to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users and a summary of relevant activities implemented by UNODC in 2008 and 2009. It includes recommendations and indicates gaps and remaining challenges for responding to HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among drug users".
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s (HCLU) video advocacy team attended a press conference organized by the Russian delegation in Vienna at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), where the representatives of the world's governments discussed the burning questions of international drug control policies. HCLU asked Mr. Viktor Ivanov, the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, the largest anti-drug agency in the world, to explain why his country does not tackle the demand side problems present in Russia with evidence based interventions, such as Opiate Substitution Treatment (OST). Mr. Ivanov declared that there is no evidence that methadone treatment works and in those former Soviet countries where OST was introduced it proved to be a failure. However, he also said that there is a possibility to experiment with methadone in the regional level.
The New Zealand Drug Foundation has produced a short video from an interview with the authors of the review of New Zealand's 35-year-old Misuse of Drugs Act. The video can be visualised online via the following link: http://vimeo.com/9643269.
This briefing paper calls for a much needed Impact Assessment of drug policy. All stakeholders in the drugs debate share the goal of a policy and legal structures that maximise social, environmental, physical and psychological wellbeing. However the drugs debate has been emotive, polarised and deadlocked and as a result, policy development has lacked objective scrutiny. Impact Assessments would bring drug policy back into the arena of science.
IDPC welcomes the appointment of Jonathan Lucas as Secretary of the INCB and chief of the INCB Secretariat. On the eve on the 53rd Session of the CND, IDPC has identified key areas of concern to bring to Mr Lucas's attention, outlined in this advocacy note.
The ‘war on drugs’ has failed to eradicate drug markets and use. A growing number of policy options are available to address drug-related harms. The IDPC Guide brings together global evidence and best practice to assist national policy makers in the design and implementation of drug policies. The Guide will be updated regularly to reflect new developments in the drug policy field.
Welcome to the first issue of the IDPC magazine. The stories in this inaugural issue tell us of the disproportionate harm suffered by individuals because of badly focused resources that target low-level “offending”, and of the human rights abuses committed in the name of drug control.
This report presents statistics on the proven offending by individuals identified as Class A drug misusing offenders. Both drug use amongst offenders, and their levels of offending can be difficult to measure with confidence. The data presented in this report are intended to provide a proxy measure which indicates the level of proven offending by known (Class A) drug-misusing individuals who have been identified through their contact with the criminal justice system.
In the long term, the task at the international level is to establish an alternative discourse regarding development-oriented drug policy, in which the voices of civil society actors should be heard.
In this 93-page report Human Rights Watch documents detainees being beaten, raped, forced to donate blood, and subjected to painful physical punishments such as "rolling like a barrel" and being chained while standing in the sun. Human Rights Watch also reported that a large number of detainees told of receiving rotten or insect-ridden food and symptoms of diseases consistent with nutritional deficiencies.
In this issue of Crime & Globalisation, Tom Blickman tracks the history of the international anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Since its origin in 1989 there has been a growing awareness that the AML regime is not working as well as intended. After two decades of failed efforts, experts still ponder how to implement one that does work. The paper concludes that current initiatives have reached their sale-by date and that a bolder approach is required at the UN level, moving from recommendations to obligations, and fully engaging developing nations, at present left out in the current 'club'-oriented process.