Human rights apply to everyone. Drug users, traffickers and growers do not forfeit their human rights, and must be able to enjoy the right to the highest attainable standard of health, as well as to social services, employment, education, freedom from arbitrary detention and so on. The trend has been to toughen drug laws and sentencing guidelines, setting mandatory minimums, disproportionate prison sentences and even death penalties in several countries. Consideration of human rights are becoming essential elements in a growing number of countries’ application of drug legislation.
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The 'Fifth Stage' of Drug Control
International Law, Dynamic Interpretation and Human Rights
Rick Lines (University of Essex)Writing in 1996, Norbert Gilmore noted that ‘little has been written about drug use and human rights. Human rights are rarely mentioned expressly in drug literature and drug use is rarely mentioned in human rights literature.’ [1] Almost twenty years later, the literature examining drug control issues through the lens of international human rights law has grown, but the total body of peer reviewed commentary and analysis in this area would barely rank the issue as a footnote in the broader human rights lexicon.
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Cross-regional statement on Drugs and Human Rights General Debate
Monday, September 22nd, 2014
This is the first member states' crossregional statement on drugs and human rights in the human rights council. Download the Statement.
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Promoting Human Rights - Based Drug Policies in Latin America
Presented at: “Drug Policy from a Public Health and Human Rights Perspective,” Side Event, 54th, Ordinary Session of CICAD, Bogota, Colombia December 10, 2013
"Latin American countries can take the lead in ensuring that national, regional, and ultimately international drug control policies are carried out in accordance with respect for the human rights of people who use drugs and affected communities more broadly." Coletta Youngers
Read the full document Promoting Human Rights - Based Drug Policies in Latin America
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Human rights and drug control: an irreconcilable contradiction?
Ernestien JensemaTuesday, October 15, 2013This week both the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna and the UN General Assembly 3rd Committee in New York discuss new drug control resolutions related to upcoming reviews of global drug policy. The high-level CND review in March 2014 and the Special Session of the General Assembly (UNGASS) on drugs in 2016 provide opportunities to change course and to ensure drug policy fully respects human rights.
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Mexico's disappeared
The enduring cost of a crisis ignored
Human Rights Watch
February 20, 2013This 176-page report documents nearly 250 “disappearances” during the administration of former President Felipe Calderón, from December 2006 to December 2012. In 149 of those cases, Human Rights Watch found compelling evidence of enforced disappearances, involving the participation of state agents.
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The Death Penalty for Drug Offences
Tipping the Scales for Abolition
Patrick Gallahue, Ricky Gunawan, Fifa Rahman, Karim El Mufti, Najam U Din & Rita FeltenHarm Reduction International (HRI)
November 2012Executions for drug offences have escalated in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia against a trend towards abolition globally, reveals a new Harm Reduction International (HRI) report The Death Penalty for Drug Offences, Global Overview 2012: Tipping the Scales for Abolition. The report reveals that over 540 people were executed for drug offences in Iran in 2011, a trend that continues in 2012 and represents a five-fold increase since 2008. At least 16 people were executed for drugs in Saudi Arabia in the first six months of 2012, compared with one person in 2011.
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Partners in Crime
International Funding for Drug Control and Gross Violations of Human Rights
P. Gallahue, R.Saucier & D. BarrettHarm Reduction International (HRI)
June 2012Millions of dollars in international aid for drug enforcement is spent in countries with extremely poor human rights records and with little or no accountability for the resulting abuses, according to a this investigative report carried out by the UK-based drugs and human rights organisation, Harm Reduction International. The report tracks drug enforcement funding from donor states, often via the United Nations, to countries where executions, arbitrary detention, physical abuse and slave labour are weapons in the war on drugs.
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Commanding general confidence?
Human Rights, International Law and the INCB Annual Report for 2011
Harm Reduction International (HRI)
March 2012This note provides an overview of human rights and international law concerns raised by the 2011 Annual Report of the International Narcotics Control Board. These include questionable legal reasoning by the Board; the absence of broader human rights norms; problematic statements on specific issues; unqualified comments and support for policies despite human rights risks; and stigmatising language unbecoming a UN entity. These are patterns that are evident in previous Annual Reports.
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The Human Rights Costs of the War on Drugs
Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)Tuesday, February 28, 2012The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), together with Transform Drug Policy Foundation, were among the NGOs launching the Count the Costs campaign to urge governments to evaluate the impacts of the 50 years old UN drug control system. This campaign movie highlights one of the most compelling issue, the human rights impacts of the global war on drugs (read Transform's report on the human rights costs).
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Human Rights and Drug Policy
An overview
Open Society Foundations, the International Harm Reduction Association, Human Rights Watch & the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
December 2010In many countries around the world, drug control efforts result in serious human rights abuses: torture and ill treatment by police, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, denial of essential medicines and basic health services. Drug control policies, and accompanying enforcement practices, often entrench and exacerbate systematic discrimination against people who use drugs, and impede access to controlled essential medicines for those who need them for therapeutic purposes.
READ MORE...Download the overview (PDF)
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