As South Africa lags far behind with harm reduction services compared to other countries in the region, wide-ranging reforms are needed to improve access to essential medicines, confront funding gaps and stop coercion into 'treatment'.
Civil society organisations urge UNODC Director, Ghada Waly, to call on Member States to change drug policies and practices to fulfil the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to place human rights at the centre of all dimensions of UNODC’s work.
The profiles of incarcerated women are remarkably similar: most are mothers, often single heads of household, who come from situations of vulnerability.
The war on drugs feeds into a racist system that concentrates power in service of whiteness, perpetuating violence and exclusion against Black communities.
The proposal would regulate the licensing of production, distribution and retail activities; as well as growers' cooperatives and individual cultivation for personal use.
Drug-related harms are compounded, not reduced, by drug policing and related criminalisation, which already harms women in a number of specific, pervasive ways.
