The implementation of the Kremlin’s law on “undesirable organisations” is reaching farcical proportions.

“We actually thought we had ‘mopped up’ our website and got rid of those ‘undesirable’ hyperlinks, but we missed one,” Anya Sarang told me, chuckling ruefully. Sarang is the head of the Andrei Rylkov Foundation, a prominent Russian group working to advance responsible drug policy. This week, a court in Moscow fined the group 50,000 rubles (US$862) for involvement with an “undesirable organisation”. The charges stem from a 2011 hyperlink on the group’s website to a publication on the website of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), which Russian authorities banned two years ago.

Russia’s 2015 law on “undesirable organisations,” authorizes the prosecutor general’s office to ban from the country any foreign or international organization that it alleges undermines the country’s security, defense, or constitutional order. OSF is one of the 11 organisations, mainly American donor institutions and capacity building groups, already blacklisted.

Once designated “undesirable,” an organisation can no longer carry out any activities in Russia. Moreover, the law provides for administrative and criminal penalties for Russian groups and citizens that cooperate with “undesirables” — administrative fines for the first two violations, and then a maximum six-year prison sentence.

A hyperlink to absurdity: How Russia's law on “undesirable organisations” impacts civil society

The Ugandan Ministry of Health has made a breakthrough decision to pilot needle and syringe programmes (NSP), led by the Uganda Harm Reduction Network (UHRN) and Community Health Alliance Uganda (CHAU).

The NSP programme will reach 250 people who inject drugs in four districts (Kampala, Mbarara, Mbale and Gulu). The pilot is being implemented by UHRN and will run until December 2018 as part of the Ugandan Global Fund programme, with a vision to scale up to more sites in Uganda.

The landmark decision was confirmed by the Ministry of Health in September. It is the result of soft and evidence-based advocacy led by Alliance Linking Organisation CHAU in partnership with UHRN, a drug user-led network that delivers peer-to-peer HIV and harm reduction services.

Wamala Twaibu, Executive Director at URHN, said: “For the past six years our strategy has been to use soft skills advocacy, targeting high level and influential persons in the Ministry of Health, and within internal affairs and law enforcement circles, to accept the concept of harm reduction in Uganda.

“With support from the Alliance’s PITCH programme [Partnership to Inspire, Transform and Connect the HIV response], we have been able to amplify the voices of people who inject drugs more effectively. Through their shared testimonies we have been able to voice out the need for needle and syringe programmes and established collaborative working relationships.

"People who use drugs have been supported to participate and organise at a grassroots level, and take part in high-level meetings and decision-making fora at district, national and global level. This has enabled us to finally secure Ministry of Health buy-in for the implementation of the needle and syringe programme in the country.”

Thumbnail: International HIV/AIDS Alliance

Breakthrough as Uganda announces harm reduction pilot

A facility in Lethbridge will become North America’s first supervised inhalation site when it opens early next year amid a drug death epidemic that has devastated families across the province.

ARCHES is the only organization or health board in the country, so far, to be granted approval by Health Canada for a site that will permit all four modes of drug consumption: injection, oral, intranasal and inhalation.

The approval allows drug users to smoke drugs like methamphetamine (crystal meth), as well as crack cocaine and heroin in specially ventilated rooms at the site.

“People are not just dying from injecting — they’re dying from snorting, taking pills orally and they’re also dying from smoking,” says ARCHES executive director Stacey Bourque.

“So it was really important of us to address all four modes of consumption, not just injection.”

Canada's first supervised inhalation site for meth, crack cocaine users to open in Lethbridge

Coca, opium poppy, and cannabis are cultivated by millions of people, mostly in the Global South. International law requires governments to uproot and destroy all cultivation of these crops not related to accepted medical and scientific use, but drug crop production still proves to be a promising livelihood for many rural populations. Efforts to replace cultivation with other activities have been mostly unsuccessful, and the current prohibitionist approach comes at an extremely high cost, including endangerment of small-holder farmers as they are pursued by police and military forces.

Drug crop production, poverty, and development - Video

How cultural attitudes, the political environment, and donor expectations shape harm reduction – and how they can divert it from its original mission as a movement.

We have been producing movies about drug policies since 2007. Through all these years, we have been traveling a lot across the world, visiting harm reduction sites and interviewing hundreds of harm reduction activists, professionals, and decision makers in various countries.

It is easy to make premature judgments about harm reduction in a country. I always have my own preconception about it before actually traveling there, based on articles and reports I have read. Most of the time, I have to admit that the reality is much more complex than my expectations. My experience tells me that sometimes countries labelled as retrograde in terms of drug policy and harm reduction can amaze you with vivid, vibrant local harm reduction scenes. And countries praised for their progressive drug policies can equally disappoint you with their rigid, medicalised systems.

Sometimes you learn the most cutting edge lessons about harm reduction and human rights among the people living in disadvantaged countries. A mistake often made is that the experience of these people is underestimated, and only success stories are highlighted and celebrated by reports from international organisations. Exchanging experiences and knowledge among decision makers and harm reduction professionals working in similar, difficult environments is often as useful as presenting best practices from Western countries. Lack of measurable success in changing policies is not necessarily a sign of the failure of advocacy efforts.

Thumbnail: Drug Reporter / Harm Reduction Coalition

Harm reduction beyond numbers

Dr Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, fully admits that he is not an expert on human rights.

He is a medical doctor with decades of experience, but he has seen how ignorance and stigma can prevent access to health care.

Loures was a doctor early on in the HIV epidemic. During that time, Loures dealt first hand with the stigma and fear associated with HIV. He often would work 18-hour shifts in hospital, as his colleagues were too afraid to assist with his HIV patients. And patients were diagnosed late, if at all, because of the fear of being labelled with the disease.

Things have changed in the 30 years since the HIV crisis first began, he said, but discrimination against people with HIV because of stereotypes and other stigma are still a barrier to accessing health care.

“What I see in terms of stigma …it seems like we are stuck in the 80s,” Loures said. “And it is clear today that this stigma is killing (people), and bringing a new crisis (in health care) to us.”

For the community that Brun Gonzalez works with, stigma and stereotypes are often underpinned by laws. Gonzalez is the chair of the International Network of People who Use Drugs and drug users are a group pilloried because of the criminalization of drugs and their associated negative impacts.

“Then people who are health service providers have this frame work where they see people who use drugs as delinquents, who strain their services, are linked to organized crimes, who are twisted, altered, sick people who have no morals, no values what so ever,” Gonzalez said. “So they don’t want to engage them, they don’t want to provide services, they don’t want to use needles around them to give them medicines.”

But there is hope and that hope comes through human rights, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. Substantial evidence shows that in every context, health policies and programmes based on human rights deliver better health outcomes, he said in his address to the Forum.

“We know what needs doing and why it should be done, and we know too that it makes financial sense,” he said. “Epidemics and pandemics demonstrate that everyone's health is interconnected – not only in the literal sense of contagion, but also in terms of economic and social impact. An extensive and nuanced body of international and national law elaborates the scope of the right to health. Access to health-care of quality is not a privilege for the wealthy few, but a universal right – and where this right is prioritised, everyone benefits.”

Thumbnail: Support Don't Punish Campaign, Global Day of Action 2017 (Russia)

Experts: Stereotypes and fear continue to block access to health care for some

Hepatitis C is not only a health issue. Without addressing the social exclusion of Roma people, repressive drug policies and the attacks against NGOs, there is no way to end the epidemic. Lessons learnt from Hungary.

The Rights Reporter Foundation organised a panel discussion on hepatitis C in Budapest on the 2nd of October. We invited activists and professionals, including Dr. Tamás Tóth, a hepatologist from the Semmelweiss University, Tamás Berecky, an activist working for the European AIDS Treatment Group, Virág Kováts, a social worker from the harm reduction NGO Altalap and Nagyné Antal Tünde from VIMOR, the Hungarian Association of Chronic Liver Patients. Before the discussion we screened our movie “The Time Is Now to Eliminate Hepatitis C” (embedded in the end of the article), produced in cooperation with the Correlation Network, filmed at the Hepatitis Community Forum in Amsterdam. The movie provided an international context by highlighting the momentum to end the epidemic with the help of highly effective new medications (read our earlier article!).

The discussion aimed to identify the major barriers and challenges to ending hepatitis C in Hungary, where the epidemic has been rapidly growing among injecting drug users due to an increase in stimulant injection and the lack of adequate access to harm reduction services. Between 2011 and 2014, the prevalence of hepatitis C among injecting drug users increased from 24% to almost 50%. In the same period, the two largest needle and syringe programs were shut down and the number of distributed needles and syringes decreased from approximately 650,000 needles per year to just 150,000 needles per year. We can state in no uncertain terms that the anti-harm reduction and anti-NGO turn of the Hungarian government resulted in thousands of new hepatitis infections.

With the advent of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) we can now massively reduce the harm from hepatitis C. Interferon-free DAA regimes are short, highly tolerable, and simple to deliver, with cure rates of over 90%. However, the price of these drugs is still prohibitively expensive and this prevents large groups of society from accessing them. The Hungarian government did not challenge the patent of the drug. They created a central registry for hepatitis C patients (HepReg), with a risk score calculator of patients registered with hepatitis C. There are long waiting lists and only those with severe liver damage can access the new treatment. Tamas Berecky, who was living with hepatitis C himself, described his own struggle through the maze of this system (read his brilliant article here!). He realised that he wouldn’t be able to receive DAAs before his liver became damaged so he explored the alternatives. He found out about drug tourism in India, where cheap, generic hepatitis drugs are available. Some Hungarian hepatologists even teamed up with tourist agencies to organise the patients’ trips to the country. However, he also realised that it is legal to order this medication online. He took the pills and was cured. Now he is helping his peers to do the same.

Testing sounds easy – but for marginalised people, such as the majority of people who use drugs and are living with the virus, it is not feasible. First of all, they do not even have access to voluntary testing and counselling services. They could previously be reached through harm reduction services, but these services are now in decline and often lack the resources to buy HCV testing kits. Even if they access tests, they will not receive treatment. Dr. Tamás Tóth estimated the total number of people living with hepatitis C at 50,000, from these 20,000 were tested positive, 10,000 received some kind of treatment and 6,000 were cured. Although the vast majority of people who test positive for hepatitis C are now people use drugs, only a small proportion of them get treatment. They often don’t have health insurance, a registered place of residence, and/or identity cards. They are invisible to the public health system.

THOSE WHO ARE MOST IN NEED ARE NOT TESTED

According to all international recommendations governments must focus resources on the testing of those who are the most vulnerable, that is, people who inject drugs. However, the Hungarian government is ignoring these recommendations. It allocated 6 billion Forints on combating hepatitis C. This is a fair amount, according to Dr. Tamás Tóth it would be enough to treat each and every person living with hepatitis C in two years, so long as it is spent on testing and treating the most vulnerable. But the government spends this money on testing campaigns among less vulnerable groups, such as health workers. Last year for example, each and every worker of the Honvéd Hospital were tested for HCV. From 2000 health workers only 2 tested positive, and one of those had known his status for years. This is a frustrating example of how much-needed resources are wasted in vain. And according to Dr. Tóth the government is planning to spend 600 million HUF next year to test health professionals. At the same time harm reduction NGOs cannot even afford to buy HCV tests, not to mention needles and syringes. And even if they do, their work is often blocked by overzealous police officers.

Dr. Tamás Tóth reported about the HCV testing project they conducted with the support of a pharmaceutical company in the correctional system. They tested prisoners in the Állampuszta Penitentiary Institution, where they found that the prevalence of hepatitis C was ten times higher than among the general population. Those who tested positive were mostly young Roma males, living in deep poverty and with prior experiences of drug injection. Those people who were treated whilst in prison were cured, but those who left without treatment were lost from the treatment system. There is no connection to community services who could have channeled these people to the public health care system. He emphasised that hepatologiss are only part of the equation. It is not possible to scale up access to HCV treatment without investing in social support and harm reduction programs.

One of the recurring themes of the discussion was the lack of coordination among different actors; connections are missing between social and health care. Only a few hepatologists treat drug users, one of whom is Dr. Olga Szabó at the addiction treatment department of the Nyírő Gyula Hospital. The Ministry of Human Resources fails to show leadership. The government created a climate of fear and suspicion towards NGOs, which are scapegoated and demonised. Government institutions that were responsible for making public policies, such as the National Centre of Epidemiology, the National Drug Prevention Institute or the National Drug Focal Point were abolished and/or merged with the Ministry, where they work under direct political control.

TO END HEPATITIS C IS NOT ONLY A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE

To end the hepatitis C epidemic is not only a public health challenge, it cannot be abstracted from the wider social and political context. Most new infections are registered among marginalised groups in society, especially people who inject drugs. Official reports rarely emphasise that in our region, Central and South-Eastern Europe, most of these people are Roma, who suffer from multiple forms of systemic discrimination and social exclusion. The same governments that allocate resources on fighting hepatitis C are reluctant to address underlying social inequalities, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and segregation as the root causes of both growing drug problems and infections. What is more, local and national governments often promote policies based on discrimination, criminalisation, and segregation. Austerity measures cutting back health and social care budgets, and punitive criminal policies targeting poor communities, are major barriers to accessing hepatitis C prevention and treatment services. Governments must use their legal powers to force the prices of drugs lower. There is a need for more synergy among public health professionals, harm reduction organisations, law enforcement officials, and organisations supporting marginalised Roma people. The most affected communities should be involved in designing services and making policies. International organisations must support the building of these coalitions that can promote alternative policies based on integration and inclusion.

Aborted efforts to fight hepatitis C in Hungary

Lisbon, 13th of November, 2017. 2nd COPOLAD II Annual Meeting of National Drugs Observatories (NDOs) gathers 71 leading authorities, 18 from Latin American Countries, 14 from Caribbean countries and 6 from the EU representing a great success maintaining for the second occasion so high response to the call from the region.

COPOLAD organizes this activity with the very close collaboration of the General-Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (SICAD), the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and Inter-American Observatory on Drugs (OID/CICAD/OAS). Meeting aim is to keep developing bi-regional cooperation and exchange between Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and European Union (EU) and in this case, aims to analyse the role of the National Drugs Observatories in shaping public politics as well as improve in the dissemination of the produced knowledge.

The opening ceremony was presided by João Castel-Branco Goulão, General-Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (SICAD) from the hosting country Portugal. He was accompanied by Alexis Goosdeel, Director of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), Marya Hynes, Acting Director of Inter-American Observatory on Drugs (OID /CICAD / OAS), María Sofía Aragón, Deputy Director of Institutional Relations of the Government Delegation for the National Plan on Drugs (DGPNSD) of Spain, Germán García de la Rosa, Director of Unit for Public Administration and Social Affairs of the International Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP), and Teresa Salvador-Llivina Director of COPOLAD.

European Drugs Agency welcomes Drug Observatories from 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries

Pharmacists in Poland have been given the go-ahead to make and distribute pharmaceutical products using cannabis after the Polish government made the drug legal for medicinal use.

The new regulations mean that Polish pharmacies will be allowed to manufacture medicines taken from imported cannabis plants, as long as they have been authorised by the country’s Office for the Registration of Medical Products.

According to the Polish Pharmaceutical Chamber, pharmacists will be given specific training on how to make drugs from cannabis, which can then be used to treat certain conditions including epilepsy, chronic pain and symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Medicinal cannabis made legal in Poland

Peter Sands will be the next executive director of the Global Fund. The decision was made by the Board on 14 November at its 38th meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. The decision comes five years less a day after Mark Dybul was selected to be the executive director in 2012. Dybul’s term ended on 31 May 2017. Since then, Marijke Wijnroks has been serving as Interim Executive Director.

The selection of Sands was accompanied by some high drama. On 10 November, Sands wrote an email to the Board leadership saying he was withdrawing from the competition “for personal reasons.” On 13 November, Sands wrote another email saying that he had changed his mind and that he wanted back in. On the morning of 14 November, the Board decided that Sands would be considered as one of the four shortlisted candidates. A few hours later, the Global Fund announced that Sands had been selected for the position.

The announcement did not say when Sands would start as the new E.D.

Peter Sands is currently Chairman of the World Bank’s International Working Group on Financing Pandemic Preparedness. He is also a Research Fellow at Harvard University, in both the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, where he works on research projects in global health and financial regulation.

Thumbnail: Copyright World Economic Forum/Photo by Oh Jaehyuk

Global Fund Board selects Peter Sands to be the next executive director

We, representatives of government ministries and agencies, law enforcement agencies, civil society as well as drug policy experts who participated in the Multisectoral Consultation on Drug Policy Reform in the Mano River Region which was held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire from 25-26 October 2017 which had participants from all four countries from the Mano River Region namely, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone; and three additional countries from the ECOWAS region namely Benin, Ghana and Senegal; and a representative from the ECOWAS Commission (as observer) hereby make the following declaration with respect to drug policy reform in the Mano River Region;

Recalling the AU Plan of Action on Drug Control and the ECOWAS Regional Action Plan to Address Illicit Drug Trafficking, Organised Crime and Drug Abuse (2016 – 2020), and calling upon West Africa Member States to take the measures necessary to fully implement the actions set out therein, with the view to attaining, in timely manner their goals and targets.

Reaffirming the West Africa Common Position towards the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS 2016) calling for human rights and public health oriented drug policies with emphasis on harm reduction and acknowledging the commitment of West African countries to address the drug problem as stated in the outcome document of the UNGASS 2016; Recognising the impact of illicit drug trafficking, production and consumption on democracy, governance, peace and security and development in West Africa;

Understanding the urgent need to foster discussions among key government stakeholders including policy makers, law enforcement and criminal justice actors, civil society to strategise on a common approach to tackle the drug problem in the region;

Mano river region (Ivory Coast) joint communiqué on drug policy reform

More than 200 non-governmental organizations also urge ASEAN to end its silence on human rights violations under President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs

MANILA, Philippines – Over 280 non-governmental organizations have called for “urgent measures” against reported human rights violations under President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs.

“We call on the world to take decisive actions to stop the killings and encourage better policies,” the global coalition said in a statement released on Friday, November 10.

The group, composed of leading human rights organizations in the Philippines, Filipino American advocacy groups, and drug policy reform, recovery, HIV/AIDS support groups, among others, urged the world to “act with urgency” in holding accountable those responsible.

It also asked the international community who are known donors to the Philippines – such as the United Nations, the United States, European Union, and Canada – to “bring their financial and diplomatic leverage to bear on this.”

“We call for a process of accountability, starting with a UN-led investigation,” it said. “At a minimum, donor states should condition most law enforcement assistance on upholding human rights norms.”

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