International AIDS Conference, Melbourne, 22 July, 2014

My thanks go to the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development for co-hosting this event today with UNDP.

The 2013 UNAIDS report on HIV and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific shows that while important gains have been made in the region's response to the epidemic, significant challenges remain. According to the report, an estimated 4.9 million people were living with HIV in Asia and the Pacific in 2012.

Many countries in the region have laws, policies and practices which drive stigma and discrimination and hamper access to HIV services. For example, some 37 countries in the region criminalize some aspects of sex work, eighteen criminalize same sex behaviour, and eleven incarcerate injecting drug users in compulsory drug detention centres. All these measures hinder people from accessing HIV services. Some eleven countries, territories, and areas in Asia and Pacific still have in place some type of HIV-related restriction on entry, stay, and/or residence.

How, then, can these challenges be addressed? The evidence analysed by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law between 2010-2012 led it to conclude that a nation's legal framework is of great importance in the effectiveness of its HIV response. Legal systems which encourage openness and transparency, promote comprehensive anti-discrimination codes, and treat consensual behaviour by adults in private as a matter beyond the reach of the criminal code tend to have much greater success in dealing effectively with HIV.

My experience in New Zealand's Parliament, over 27.5 years, supports these findings. When I first took office, New Zealand's statute book would not have been viewed favourably by the Global Commission.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Helen Clark, UNDP, highlights need to review harmful laws to end AIDS epidemic at Melbourne Conference

The Eurasian Harm Reduction Network (EHRN) invites representatives of the people who use drugs community from Denmark, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Estonia and Lithuania to participate in a video advocacy training that will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on September 2-5, 2014.

Training participants will learn how to develop national advocacy campaigns and improve technical skills in video production. The focus of the training will be on advocacy and campaigning for peer distribution of naloxone in order to reduce the rate of overdose mortality in the European Union. Skills gained during the training will be used in implementing a national advocacy campaign titled “I am the Evidence,” which will collect and promote video testimonials about personal experiences with naloxone, and thereby demonstrate that naloxone saves lives in 6 EU countries: Denmark, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Estonia and Lithuania.

Training is organized in frames of the International Harm Reduction Association project "EuroHRN II: Supporting innovative measures to address the reduction of drug related harm in Europe.” EHRN is an implementing partner of this project.

For more information about the training, see the training announcement below.

To apply for this training, please fill in the application form below.

Applications to participate in the training should be sent before July 31, 2014 to erika@harm-reduction.org.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Apply: Video advocacy training on September 2-5, 2014 in Vilnius, Lithuania

Across the globe, HIV rates are climbing among sex workers and people who use drugs. One of the main reasons is that they are criminalized. Too often sex workers and drug users are forced to choose between protecting their health and staying safe from police harassment or arrest.

But a novel approach to law enforcement is changing this, and may prove as critical to HIV prevention as a condom or clean needle. Through partnerships with HIV experts and community groups, police from Kenya to Kyrgyzstan are realizing their role in the fight against HIV.

Above, Daniel Wolfe, director of the Open Society International Harm Reduction Development Program, talks about how police are working to implement harm reduction approaches to HIV prevention with these vulnerable populations.

How police can arrest the spread of HIV

Tens of thousands of prisoners serving time for federal drug offenses will be eligible to seek early release beginning next year. The United States Sentencing Commission, which voted in April to reduce the penalties for most drug crimes, voted unanimously on Friday to make that change retroactive. It will apply to nearly 50,000 federal inmates who are serving time under the old rules.

The Sentencing Commission said the move would help ease prison overcrowding and reduce prison spending, which makes up about a third of the Justice Department’s budget. The change comes amid a bipartisan effort to roll back the harshest penalties set during the height of the drug war. Civil rights groups and prison-reform advocates cheered the decision.

In testimony before Congress and the Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has pushed for reductions in drug sentences. Highlighting racial disparities, he has cast prison policy as a civil rights issue.'

The Sentencing Commission change takes effect on Nov. 1 unless Congress votes to overrule it. Prisoners would not be eligible for early release until a year from then.

The commission estimated that, on average, eligible prisoners could have their sentences reduced by about two years and will have served about nine years in prison. The thousands of early releases will not happen immediately. New prisoners will become eligible each year as they approach the end of their sentences. Each request for early release will be reviewed by a federal judge.

New rule permits early release for thousands of drug offenders in the USA

Apply for HIV Grants for Civil Society Organizations

This Call for Proposals seeks to provide funding support to civil society organizations working in the area of harm reduction. The proposals should aim at strategic initiatives addressing HIV prevention, treatment, care and support among people who inject drugs.

Grant funding under this Call for Proposals shall be provided to proposals that:

are focused on HIV prevention and/or treatment and/or care and/or support among people who inject drugs. This is assessed on the basis of how well the proposed activities are contributing to achieving the UNGASS target of working towards reducing transmission of HIV among people who inject drugs by 50 per cent by 2015;

support the active participation of drug user communities;

have an international reach (regional or global);

are initiated, planned, managed, implemented, monitored and/or evaluated by community based organizations.

Grants may be awarded either for self-contained activities or for activities which are a component of a larger project. If other funds are required for implementing the project please provide evidence of the secured funding up front.

Furthermore, funds will not normally be given to support travel, meetings, conferences or similar gatherings.

Please note that all activities financed by this Grants programme must be new interventions, that would not be able to take place without the funding securing though the Grants award.

UNODC HIV/AIDS grants programme - Empowered communities, stronger HIV response

Washington DC has ended criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of cannabis, giving the US capital one of the most liberal marijuana laws in America.

Beginning on Thursday, people caught with less than one ounce (28g) will be assessed a $25 (£15) civil violation, akin to a ticket for littering.

It remains a crime punishable with jail to sell cannabis or smoke it in public.

The new law was intended to ease racial disparities in marijuana arrests.

When they passed the law in the spring, Washington DC city councillors noted that surveys show white and black people smoke marijuana at roughly the same rate, but in Washington DC black people were far more likely to be arrested and jailed for marijuana possession.

Washington DC marijuana decriminalisation law takes effect

Last week, two major bodies of the UN made inquiries into drug policies and its impact on human rights in Georgia. Questions such as zero tolerant drug policies, money extortion from people who use drugs and the power of police in the context of drug policies in Georgia were posed to the government. And while responding to the questions asked, it seemed that the country is still far from human rights based, coherent drug policies.

The observations from the Committee on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women that highlighted issues of women in the places of detention, equal standard of health for men and women including Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) unveiled that government is too embarrassed to openly acknowledge the faults in the system. Even more, in relation to drug treatment for women in detention the Deputy Minister Ms Kristesashvili noted there are 13 women who use drugs and 43 that potentially maybe using drugs in detention and those who express their interest and wish to take OST they are transported to the civil services. Such statements contradict the practice, when women may be taken to the male prisons to receive treatment should such a need be established.

Drug policies, human rights and Georgian reality in the United Nations

The international AIDS community is mourning the deaths of more than 100 AIDS activists and researchers whose plane was shot down over Ukraine and who were travelling to Melbourne for the International HIV/AIDS conference.

298 people – 283 passengers including three infants and 15 crew – were killed on the Malaysia Airlines flight 17.

The former International AIDS Society president Joep Lange and his partner and ArtAids board member Jacqueline van Tongeren have been confirmed as having been on the flight, while there are reports of others including a World Health Organization spokesman, Glenn Thomas.

IDPC would like to offer its deepest condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who died in this trategic and shocking event.

AIDS community mourns loss of 100 AIDS activists and researchers in Malaysia plane crash

With the opening of its first recreational marijuana outlets on July 8, Washington became the second state in the US to put into practice its cannabis regulatory framework. This follows Colorado's initiative which began on January 1 this year and has so far seen modest signs of success; tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales surpassed $10 million in the first four months of 2014, and a number of key crime indicators have fallen in urban areas -- though the latter is perhaps a tenuous link to the introduction of legal cannabis.

With two down, that leaves one to go; Uruguay. The South American state is the first ever country to legalize marijuana and the first sales are expected to take place either late this year, or early in 2015.

While much has been made of these three initiatives by both reformers and prohibitionists alike, they are by no means uniform in their approach.

Infographic: The differences between Uruguay, Colorado & Washington marijuana laws

Release has just launched Y-Stop, a new stop and search project for young people by young people. The project addresses the problems experienced during a police led stop and search. It aims to give you the skills to handle stop and search and your interactions with the police, as well as provide tools for advice, empowerment and reporting police behaviour. Y-Stop details 6 key principles to help you deal with a stop and search.

Want to know more? Take a look at the Y-Stop S.E.A.R.C.H. Card that explains each of them, with all the information and tips you need for handling a stop and search.

You can also slip your card into a Y-Stop Oyster Card wallet to make sure it’s always in your pocket. If you’d like to order these materials email natasha@release.org.uk

Release also provides peer training to train you on how to apply these 6 principles. If you want to book Release for a session email natasha@release.org.uk

This is just the first step of a growing project. Release will be creating more materials over the coming months!

Click here to find out more about Y-Stop.

Stop and search project launched by Release

Georgia’s policy is a striking example of an approach to drug abuse based on scientific evidence and what’s best for public health rather than harsh criminal justice.

Two years ago 24,000 people were in jail in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Today the figure is 10,000. The reduction – achieved through an amnesty and an end to jail sentences for personal drug possession and other minor offences – is one of the fastest falls in prison population on record, apart from mass releases in war or revolution.

Archil Talakvadze, Georgia’s Deputy Minister of Corrections, speaks of the change of policy as a striking example – still little known abroad – of an approach to drug abuse based on scientific evidence and what’s best for public health rather than harsh criminal justice.

“We had a repressive approach that led to one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, prison overcrowding and infections running out of control,” says Talakvadze, who comes from a health background. “Now we think about ‘harm reduction’ to balance law enforcement.”

Harm reduction: time to end the war on drugs?

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit says the time has come to review Dominica’s marijuana laws. A regional committee could soon be established to dialogue with experts on the matter which is being given attention by CARICOM.

The Prime Minister told a press conference on July 7, 2014 that the marijuana issue needs to be discussed on a wider scale, in light of calls for the decriminalization of the herb here.

“We believe the time has come for us to look at the laws relating to marijuana, for example someone with a very small quantity of marijuana, we will send him to prison, and the question is, if a man has five grams of marijuana should this person be sent to prison for that small amount and that person would have a criminal record for the rest of his life,” Mr Skerrit said.

The Prime Minister said Dominica’s conviction laws for the possession of marijuana need to be reviewed as too many young people are being convicted for small amounts of marijuana which could have a negative impact on their future.

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