UNAIDS and Global Fund speak out for a coherent strategy on drug policy at IDPC side event

Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund joined Damon Barrett (IHRA) and Mike Trace (IDPC) at a side event in the margins of the high-level segment calling for greater coherence within the UN system on the issue of drug policy, with particular reference to HIV prevention for people who inject drugs. The event was co-sponsored by IHRA and Human Rights Watch.

The speakers highlighted the human rights imperative that underpins the need to scale up harm reduction programmes across the globe. One of the greatest obstacles to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care for people who use drugs is the pursuit of an incoherent and wasteful strategy that priorities security and punishment over public health and human rights. The event is summarised in an IDPC briefing paper, 'ECOSOC side event ‘From Vienna to Geneva to New York – Reconciling UN Mandates with Regard to the Response to Illicit Drugs’.

Read the IDPC briefing paper prepared before the event, 'The 10-year review of the United Nations Drug Control System: Difficult questions remain for member states and UN system wide coherence.'