In South Africa, extensive violence and injustices against People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) occur on a daily basis. Moreover, access to a fair trial or legal support is rare for this target group. Mainline connected their South African partners to PKNI from Indonesia. This network of PWUD has organised paralegal support via their peer networks.

When someone is arrested for drug charges, PKNI makes sure they get the information and legal support they need. They often manage to avoid prison sentences. As part of Mainlines’ south-south exchange programme, PKNI provided paralegal training for the PWUD community in South Africa.

The training took place in December 2016. Participants were from the PWUD community in South Africa who have united in the network of Drug Users of Cape Town (DUCT) and the Drug Users of Gauteng (DUG).

During the training, knowledge and experience were transferred by the facilitators from Indonesia. Their expertise was combined with the expertise of a South African lawyer. This ensured a good connection with the local legal context.

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Indonesia-South Africa exchange: Paralegal (peer) support

Under the Bridging the Gaps 2 programme, Mainline aspires to support harm reduction services in Tanzania. To fully understand the opportunities, needs and socio-political circumstances, Mainline organised two scoping visits in 2016. The situation for people who use drugs in the United Republic of Tanzania is delicate.

With the election of a new president in July 2016, many established guidelines for working with key populations and NGOs are being revisited and revised. The approved new guidelines around key populations and HIV should be made public by the beginning of 2017. The revisions are causing some uncertainty because it’s unclear, for example, whether the guidelines around Needles and Syringe Programmes (NSP) might be altered.

Tanzania has fulfilled a leading role in the East African region by introducing an exceptionally successful harm reduction programme – including a strong NSP component and methadone distribution in Dar es Salaam. However, the continuation of this great work is not certain as recent incidents show. For example, the new president, since taking office, has outlawed lubricants in an effort to discourage men from having sex with men. It is very possible that similar decisions will be made where it concerns service delivery for people who use drugs.

Harm reduction in Tanzania: a delicate balance

Between March and October 2016, Doctors of the World/Médecins du Monde (MdM) organized a series of trainings on Hepatitis C intended for its Harm Reduction international teams and partners with a focus on people who use drugs.

Four trainings were held in Hanoi (Vietnam), Myitkyina (Myanmar), Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar Es Salam (Tanzania), involving care providers, social workers and peer educators working with MdM and its partners.

These trainings aimed at strengthening participants’ knowledge and capacities not only to improve the quality of hepatitis C prevention and screening services in Harm Reduction programs but also to further develop their expertise and thus boost advocacy for a universal access to hepatitis C prevention and treatment.

Click here for the presentations and training tools

Click here for pedagogical videos on HCV test counselling

Training series: Hepatitis C and harm reduction for people who use drugs

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) today welcomed the indefinite suspension of the hearings on the death penalty bills by the Philippine Senate’s Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The Committee’s Chairman, Senator Richard Gordon, indicated the suspension was needed until the Department of Justice is able to submit its opinion on the Philippines’ obligations under the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). That instrument requires the Philippines to maintain its abolition.

On 7 February 2017, the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights held its first hearing on the proposed measure reintroducing the death penalty for illegal drugs and other crimes. A similar bill to restore the death penalty is also currently being debated in plenary at the House of Representatives.

At the Senate hearing, senators opposing the proposed measure recalled that the Philippines is a State Party to the Second Optional Protocol, and thus, it is obliged not to execute any person within its jurisdiction. Senator Richard Gordon, who chairs the Committee, thereafter, called for the indefinite suspension of the hearings on this matter until there could be clarity on the ramifications on the Philippines if it breaches its obligations under the Second Optional Protocol.

“Abolitionist States may not return to the use of the death penalty generally under the ICCPR, and States that become party to the Second Optional Protocol assume very specific obligations to that effect,” said Emerlynne Gil, ICJ’s Senior International Legal Adviser for Southeast Asia. “There really is no inconsistency between the Second Optional Protocol and the Philippine Constitution.”

“As a general rule, the Philippine Constitution prohibits the death penalty except for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes,” Gil said. “But in no way does it mandate that the death penalty be put into effect.”

By ratifying the Second Optional Protocol, the Philippines has voluntarily chosen to be bound by an international obligation not to impose the death penalty—which it might otherwise have had the option to do under the Constitution. As the ICJ explains in its memorandum on this issue, this is the very essence of treaty making.

“To announce long after ratification that a treaty is inconsistent with the Constitution and so not to be treated as binding, would call into question virtually every treaty to which Philippines is a party. This would contradict the most basic foundations of the international legal system and would lead other countries to view the Philippines as virtually incapable of making a reliable international legal agreement,” Gil emphasized.

The ICJ emphasized that if the Philippines brings back the death penalty into its domestic laws, it would also be in violation of its obligations under the ICCPR, which effectively prohibits States from bringing back the death penalty once it has been abolished in domestic laws.

The Philippines cannot withdraw from Second Optional Protocol, which has no denunciation or withdrawal clause. The UN Human Rights Committee has explained that a denunciation clause was deliberately omitted because once the people are accorded the protection of the rights under the Second Optional Protocol, they shall not be deprived of such protection.

Ms. Emerlynne Gil, ICJ’s Senior International Legal Adviser, tel. no. +66 840923575 OR email: emerlynne.gil@icj.org

Philippines: Legislators should permanently end consideration of new death  penalty proposals

Peru's government says it will present to the opposition-dominated legislature a plan to legalize the medical use of marijuana "for the treatment of serious and terminal illnesses."

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's administration said Wednesday the plan was developed after police raided a house in a Lima neighborhood where a group of parents grew marijuana to make oil for treating their children suffering from epilepsy and other diseases.

Officials say that trafficking and use of marijuana for other purposes would remain a crime under the proposal.

Aida Farfan belongs to the parent group that was raising marijuana and said it has more than 80 members whose sick children benefited from the medicinal properties of marijuana. She says the group petitioned lawmakers for years trying to get those uses legalized.

Peru's government proposes to legalise medicinal cannabis

Cambodia’s newly launched war on drugs is in full swing, with nearly 3,000 people arrested in the campaign’s first month of crime-busting. Authorities claim they have confiscated over 9kg of illegal drugs in busts on dealers and users, with more than half the haul being crystal methamphetamine, one of the country’s most prevalent and abused narcotics.

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government announced the campaign in December shortly after a state visit by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has made global waves through his violent execution of an anti-drugs drive that has seen more than 7,000 deaths.

Cambodian officials have said their campaign was launched in response to a nearly 30% rise in the number of documented drug addicts last year, according to official data.

In Duterte’s footsteps, Hun Sen launches a drug war

On Feb. 6 Behavioral Health System Baltimore and Baltimore City Police announced the launch of a new collaboration program called L.E.A.D that aims to help low-level drug offenders.

L.E.A.D. (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) is a pre-booking diversion program according to a press release. Baltimore police officers can refer individuals suspected of low-level drug or prostitution crimes to case managers, who will help them access an array of services including drug treatment, mental health services, and housing aid.

Individuals facing arrest can choose not to participate in L.E.A.D., and will go through the normal criminal justice process.

Baltimore, USA: New police programme aims to keep low-level offenders out of jail

In January 1981, the Junkiebond was formed as an advocacy and activist drug user group based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. As early as 1981, Junkiebond started an underground needle and syringe programme (NSP) with the aim of protecting people who inject drugs from hepatitis B. They took an activist approach campaigning for effective services for drug users, challenging discrimination and defending human rights.

The Junkiesbond closed in the late 1980s, but its influence remains strong with groups like Respect in the UK and Chemical Reaction in Edinburgh Scotland embracing the grassroots approach. These groups again operate primarily through peer networks, are often well integrated and engaged with drug supply (dealing) networks, and run a whole array of mutual aid functions. These can include advocacy with drug treatment providers, peer education, secondary or peer-led needle and syringe programmes, legal advocacy and consumer advocacy with local drug suppliers.

A brief history of drug user self-organisations

The body of Thokazani Hadebe lay on the pavement on the corner of Milne and Point Road, Durban, for the better part of a day before it was removed -- a chilling reminder of the dangers of injecting drugs.

According to a friend, Hadebe had come out of prison the day before and that same night he purchased a R75 unit of stone (heroin), mixed it with 20ml of water, and injected it. This was after taking mandrax and drinking alcohol. Hadebe passed out and it was only much later that someone realised he wasn't just sleeping.

His death is just one of many among injecting drug users in Durban who have died over the past year from either overdosing or drug-related afflictions and diseases. Hadebe's death points to the great need for the harm reduction services.

South Africa: Don't treat drug users as criminals, say health workers

“We can’t kill our way out of the drug problem.”

So says Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros, who this week declared President Rodrigo Duterte’s abusive “war on drugs” a failure. Hontiveros is instead calling for a public health solution to the bloodshed that has killed at least 7,022 people since July 1, 2016.

Hontiveros is seeking legislative support for a draft law that will create “an integrated and comprehensive public health approach” to addressing illegal drug use. The move comes too late for the 2,555 suspected drug users and dealers killed by police, as well as the 3,603 killings by “unidentified gunmen” since last July. But if Hontiveros can marshal the backing needed to enact her draft law, it might propel a rethinking by the authorities and the public of Duterte’s bloody “drug war.”

Philippine lawmaker declares abusive ‘Drug War’ a failure

In August of 2016, Aarón Valencia and his family fled to the United States amid the violence of Mexico’s drug war. Gangs had threatened to force two of his children into organized crime in his home state of Michoacán, and seeking refuge in the United States seemed his only option.

Today, Aarón, a former member of a vigilante militia disarmed by the Mexican government, and his family are being held at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, waiting for their asylum claim to be processed. They are among the millions of victims of the drug war that rages in Mexico to this day.

Over the past decade, several U.S. states have moved to legalize or decriminalize marijuana, a shift that has improved the lives of countless Americans. But while legalization is an important component of righting the wrongs of the drug war, it is not the only component—especially for the hundreds of thousands of Mexican families who have already been victimized by a century of prohibitionist policies.

As U.S. states decriminalise cannabis, Mexico’s drug war rages on

Minister for Health Simon Harris and Minister of State for Communities and the National Drugs Strategy, Catherine Byrne today (Tuesday) welcomed the Government’s decision to approve the publication of the Misuse of Drugs (Supervised Injecting Facilities) Bill 2017.

The Bill, which was approved by Cabinet at its meeting this morning, will allow the Minister for Health to issue a licence, with conditions, to operate a supervised injecting facility. This is a controlled environment where drug users may self-administer, by injection, drugs they have brought with them. Such facilities will provide access to clean, sterile injecting equipment and have trained staff on hand to provide emergency care in the event of an overdose, as well as advice on treatment and rehabilitation. They will also help alleviate the problems associated with injecting on the street, including drug-related litter.

Minister Harris said that he is, “delighted to be bringing forward this important legislation that adopts a health-led approach to drugs-use by those in our society who have been marginalised as a result of their addictions.”

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