As part of the informal program of the High-level Meeting on AIDS of the UN General Assembly, initiated by the International Network of People Who Use Drugs INPUD, a discussion “The Right to Rights: How to Achieve this Goal for People Who Use Drugs” took place.
The event discussed the human rights obstacles faced by people who use drugs, UNAIDS reported. Participants were introduced to existing international recommendations and best practices for their application, as well as political initiatives to reform legal norms that criminalize drug use and possession. According to the initiators of the discussion, the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health of people who use drugs must be considered in the context of a number of rights, including the right to non-discrimination, the right to freedom from arbitrary detention, violence and bodily integrity.
The keynote speech of the meeting, authored by Fariba Soltani, Global Coordinator and Head of the HIV/AIDS Office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, dealt with the United Nations Common Position on Drug Policy and the United Nations Common Position on Imprisonment, released in April 2021. In her presentation, she cited successful examples of working together to train law enforcement officials in Moldova and Ukraine.
In support of her presentation, there were also presentations by Zaved Mahmoud from OHCHR and Ludo Boca from UNDP. The latter presented the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drugs. Michel Kazatchkine , UNAIDS Special Adviser on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, said that 40% were people who used drugs.“In the absence of ART, harm reduction programs, substitution therapy, this was understandable, but it is completely inexplicable and not justified now that all these services are available,” he stressed.
Michel Kazatchkine also said that the practice of imprisonment for personal drug use in many countries is nothing more than an ineffective and meaningless waste of public funds. Turning to the issues of human rights to freedom from discrimination, he stressed that this right also inherently belongs to people who use drugs.
Richard Elliott from the HIV Legal Network of Canada presented an in-depth analysis of the controversial objectives of the state to control drug trafficking and decriminalize their personal use and the specifics of the practical application of decriminalizing policies at various levels of their implementation from police departments and prosecutors’ offices to municipal decisions.
Daniel Morgana, Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, spoke about the successes and failures of the national drug policy, focusing on the prevention of drug use by young people. According to her, the tightening of measures over the past three years has led to only one result – 1000 additional court cases brought against people who use drugs. Ernesto Corta spoke about the situation in Latin America, citing examples from Costa Rica, Bolivia and Brazil, which include both extremely harsh measures, such as, for example, deprivation of motherhood for drug use by women, and positive examples of how drug use is treated as a health issue rather than offenses.