Community-based organizations in Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, with assistance from UNAIDS, are supporting women who use drugs and their families to survive during these difficult times.

“Before the pandemic, life was simple and better. I used to do activities at the beach, such as cleaning fish, helping people load and clean their boats, and they would pay me. I would help my daughter wash her clothes; I would escort her to school and cook food for her. Life was simple,” said Doroth Hassan as she sits in the office of SALVAGE, a sister organization of the Tanzania Network for People who Use Drugs (TaNPUD), in Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam.

Ms Hassan would normally provide for herself and her daughter by doing sex work and other informal jobs, such as the work on the beach. But this has become a challenge since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now life has changed. I live in fear and worry. People who I worked for don’t want to pay, with the excuse that they have no cash because of the coronavirus. Everything changed. Life is tough. Clients disappeared, vanished. And the few who are still coming cheat; they pay less for sex,” said Ms Hassan.

She is not alone in her worry. Most of the women who use drugs in Dar es Salaam survive in the same way as Ms Hassan does, by doing sex work, trading and doing other jobs in the informal sector. They live in camps for people who use drugs or in informal and densely populated settlements.

With support from UNAIDS and other partners, local community-based organizations, including TaNPUD and SALVAGE, have been able to provide some relief to women in the camps and settlements in Dar es Salaam.

Tanzanian community-based organizations support women who use drugs

The UK’s first fully-fledged scheme to provide heroin users with a safe and legal supply of the drug has been extended for a further year, after showing “very promising results”.

Heroin-assisted treatment has been used successfully for decades in Switzerland, based in part on Britain’s long-forgotten model of heroin prescribing, and despite “impressive” UK trials, government funding for post-pilot schemes was removed in 2015.

But in Cleveland and Glasgow, police and local health experts have pushed in recent years for the creation of two of the UK’s first fully-fledged centres, both of which are now up and running, providing access to medical-grade diamorphine twice per day and to wider social support.

Campaigners celebrated the first “dramatic” results from Middlesbrough’s scheme on Wednesday, which found a vast reduction in re-offending rates and use of street drugs, and significant improvements in participants’ health and quality of life, including seeing those homeless at the outset placed in accommodation.

Thirteen of the city’s most at-risk heroin users, who had found other treatments unsuccessful and were of concern to criminal justice agencies and health services, accessed the programme – which will now be largely funded by money seized from criminals. Eight remain, while five dropped out or were suspended.

Researchers studied six of the participants over 29 weeks in the programme, who prior to the scheme had been responsible for at least 541 crimes at an estimated cost to the public purse of £2.1m. Between them, they committed just three lower-scale offences over 29 weeks of treatment.

‘Very promising’: UK’s first full heroin-prescribing scheme extended after reductions in crime and homelessness

Over the last 8 years, thousands of Support. Don’t Punish campaigners have mobilised in favour of drug policies and narratives that promote the wellbeing of our communities.

Rejecting stigma, criminalisation and killings, we campaign for responses to drug-related challenges that are rights-affirming, value the preciousness of life, put people first and leave no one behind.

While the COVID-19 pandemic might have limited our capacity to meet in person, the success of the 2020 Global Day of Action shows our dedication to making change and our sense of solidarity are undeterred.

With that in mind, the ‘This is not a webinar’ workshop series seeks to create space for sharing knowledge, experiences and learning with fellow campaigners.

The series gravitates around three themes, selected in consultation with Support. Don’t Punish campaigners worldwide:

‘This is not a webinar’ workshop series – Call for applications

During COVID-19 lockdowns, Youth RISE has seen its members acting quickly on the ground to ensure that the communities of people who use drugs and other marginalized populations have what they need. Adapting to the difficulties of lockdowns and streets becoming more dangerous requires insider knowledge and a lot of trust.

Youth RISE members supported one another throughout the pandemic in terms of harm reduction advice and sharing lessons, but also on a personal level. As a decentralized organization where much of communication is virtual, Youth RISE members were well-adapted to lots of video calls.

Also due to COVID-19, Rory O’Brien’s SSDP chapter and Sensible Minnesota teamed up to get a letter drafted and sent to prevent the eviction of people living in sober living homes. They worked with a state representative to draft and send a letter that informed the administration of sober living homes that the peacetime emergency ban on evictions applied to them. They also disseminated it online, informing those living in these homes of their rights.

When Róisín was SSDP Chapter Leader for Dublin City University, they heard that the university was rewriting their alcohol policy, and saw a window of opportunity. They approached the administration and asked to rewrite their drug policy as well.

“The people who were getting in trouble for drugs were generally not necessarily the people who were doing the most drugs or doing drugs in the most visible way,” she shared, noting different socioeconomic backgrounds as a determinant for who was targeted.

Young people in drug policy advocacy – Part 2: Global issues, local dynamics

Isolation, drug-supply disruptions and other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have sent North America’s already-high overdose rates soaring. Here in Canada, the Liberal government has belatedly taken a significant step in response.

On August 17, the director of public prosecutions issued new guidelines under which federal prosecutors are to resort to criminal prosecution for possession

nly in the “most serious” cases—that is, where accompanying circumstances or conduct are deemed to pose a risk to others. It’s a potential, tentative 

 decriminalization. Recommended responses to possession of smaller quantities comprise addiction treatment (including Indigenous cultural or abstinence-based recovery centres), counseling, or restorative justice (including Indigenous restorative justice programs) among others.

Some media outlets instantly announced that Canada was decriminalizing. Others, including 

Decriminalization has been on the agenda in the United States, too. Decriminalization of possession may now come to pass in Oregon, where Measure 110, replacing arrests with fines and funding treatment, is on the November ballot. That initiative has been heavily backed by the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance,* which in August released a “model bill” for federal decriminalization. And numerous local jurisdictions have taken steps like curtailing possession arrests during the pandemic, or deprioritizing enforcement of naturally occurring psychedelics.

Canada looks likely to achieve national decriminalization sooner, however. The August announcement was preceded by numerous encouraging signs.

By 2018, a majority of residents of Vancouver—until recently the Canadian city hardest hit by opioid-involved overdose deaths—supported dropping criminal penalties for drug possession. And as the toxic drug supply crisis has deepened across the country, long-held prohibitionist attitudes have gradually given way. By February of this year, one poll found some 47 percent of Canadians in favor of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of illegal drugs. Mayors of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal called for the same—as did major public health figures, often also proposing the further step of legal regulation. By July, even the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police had followed suit.

And yet, Canada’s Liberal government, which legalized cannabis in 2018 and which is not philosophically opposed to decriminalization, has consistently refused growing calls to enact it.

How a Canadian decriminalization model can improve on Portugal

IDPC is looking for an Online Training Consultant to design, plan and implement a regional online training workshop and training fellowship programme covering topics relating to decriminalisation of drug use (and possession for personal use), including harm reduction and human rights approaches.

To apply for this consultancy, please submit an expression of interest by sending a cover letter, CV and two samples of your relevant work by Wednesday 14 October 2020 to: Ms. Tae Wattanawanitchakorn, IDPC Programme Officer, e-mail: pattamon[@]idpc.net.

Call for expressions of interest: IDPC Online Training Consultant

After offering technical assistance to Duterte, the United Nations risks being complicit in the human rights crisis in the Philippines

Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted by consensus a resolution that encourages technical assistance on human rights matters to the government of the Philippines, while ignoring calls for an international investigation into the nation’s ‘war on drugs’. The resolution also fails to recognise the extent of the human rights violations in the Philippines, adding insult to injury for thousands of victims as well as human rights defenders who risk their lives daily to seek accountability for the Government’s abuses.

In spite of the repeated calls by UN human rights experts, human rights defenders, and local and international civil society to establish an international investigative mechanism on the situation in the Philippines, and a recent UN report exposing at least 8,663 killings due to the so-called ‘anti-drugs’ campaign, today the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that merely encourages the UN system to provide technical assistance and capacity-building to the Philippines. Pursuant to the resolution, cooperation would cover various human rights issues, including drug policies, domestic accountability, engagement with civil society, and counter-terrorism.

The Human Rights Council assumes that technical cooperation will be enough to end widespread human rights violations in the Philippines, despite the progressive deterioration of the situation on the ground, and the demonstrated defiance and hostility of the Government towards UN human rights bodies. People who use or are engaged with drugs continue to be killed, while President Duterte incites violence and calls for the death penalty for drug offences. The Philippines recently adopted a highly contested Anti-Terror Law that could be used to silence government critics, while civil society continues to be targeted and killed. The internal review panel recently announced by the Government to investigate the deaths caused by the ‘anti-drugs’ campaign is neither impartial nor independent by any standard, as it is headed by the same government agencies that are to be investigated.

In engaging in technical cooperation with the Philippines, the United Nations must be mindful of its own human rights obligations, ensure that its assistance is not used to cover up these failings, and that survivors, families, and witnesses are not put at danger by domestic processes. Civil society organizations must be actively and meaningfully engaged by both the United Nations and government agencies, and their safety equally ensured.

The resolution adopted today also mandates UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to report back to the Council within a year. We urge the High Commissioner to seize this crucial responsibility to document the ongoing violations in their full extent, to assess domestic accountability mechanisms, and to evaluate the impact of UN assistance.

The UN Human Rights Council and its Member States are now responsible for the effectiveness of technical assistance and cooperation in ending the human rights crisis in the Philippines, ensuring that violations and abuses are independently and effectively investigated, and that those responsible are brought to justice. When it comes to drug control alone, cooperation should lead to an immediate end to the killings associated to the ‘anti-drugs’ campaign, the reform of drug policies to bolster evidence-based harm reduction, the end of compulsory detention for drug use, and rights-based drug treatment – among others.

As civil society organisations and the community of people who use drugs, we will continue to follow the cooperation closely to see if these outcomes are delivered. If this effort at technical assistance do not deliver a clear and significant improvement of the human rights situation soon, the Human Rights Council will need to follow up with the establishment of an international, impartial, and credible investigation on the human rights violations.

UN fails to respond to human rights violations in the Philippines

IDPC is looking for a communications expert to work with the IDPC Regional Director: Asia, on a short-term and part-time consultancy basis, until the end of December 2020, to design and implement communications strategies that support the delivery of our workplan in Asia. Due to the fact that most of our work now has to be delivered online, the consultant does not need to be based in Bangkok, but preferably within Asia.

Call for expressions of interest: IDPC Communications Consultant

We are seeking proposals from experienced e-learning expert consultants to guide, design and implement an engaging, accessible, interactive and flexible e-learning course. Knowledge of drug policy issue is not required, as the successful applicant will work closely alongside the IDPC team (based in London and Bangkok) as well as a fellow consultant who is being recruited to write / script all of the actual content for the e-learning course.

We welcome proposals from consultants with a demonstrable track record in creating effective and attractive e-learning courses – preferably using a range of different methods and tools.

For more information on the application process, please check the Call below. Any questions ahead of the deadline may also be sent to jbridge@idpc.net.

All proposals must be sent to Jamie Bridge, IDPC Chief Operating Officer (jbridge[@]idpc.net) by Sunday, 18 October 2020.

Call for proposals: Consultant for the development of a new e-learning course

Why don’t more mainstream aid organizations work on the issue of illegal drugs like cannabis, coca or opium poppy? We’ve known for decades that the prevalent approach to these – prohibition – harms small-scale farmers that grow them, fuels violence, undermines the rule of law and contaminates politics (the UN estimates the illegal drugs trade is worth $500bn a year – that buys you a lot of politicians).

 happen’ topic in my 7 minutes of fame on a panel last week, organized by a logotastic smorgasbord of thinktanks and NGOs in the ‘drug policy’ community. The other speakers were making an impassioned case for ‘legal regulation’ (we don’t call it legalization/decriminalization any more, apparently) as an alternative to prohibition, including launching these rather good 20 principles for how to approach it.

Helen Clark, who has just taken over as Chair of Global Commission on Drug Policy kicked off with a summary of the case for treating drugs as a development and health issue, and concluded ‘‘we see no justification for 

My question was, why aren’t more development organizations listening?

Why are illegal drugs still a cinderella issue in development?

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte administration’s bloody “war on drugs” worsened during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to the government’s own statistics.

Police killed 50 percent more people between April to July 2020 than they did in the previous four-month period. In total, since Duterte took office in June 2016, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has officially recognized 5,810 persons killed as of the end of July 2020.

Human Rights Watch analyzed the government’s statistics and found 155 persons were killed in the past four months. Before the Covid-19 crisis, police killed 103 persons from December 2019 to March 2020.

The number of fatalities in these ostensible drug enforcement raids, in which the police routinely claimed that the victims fought back, jumped dramatically from the 26 deaths recorded by the PDEA in five months from July to November 2019.

The PDEA’s figure of 5,810 killed only covers deaths in police anti-drug operations. Thousands of other drug suspects have been killed by unidentified assailants, many of whom are believed to be plainclothes police officers or vigilantes operating in coordination with local authorities. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, acting on a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2019, reported more than 8,600 people have died in Duterte’s “drug war.” Human rights groups believe the actual number could be triple that. Only one case out of thousands has resulted in the conviction of police officers.

Since March 16, the Philippine government has imposed varying types of quarantines and lockdowns. The lockdown in Metro Manila, enforced mainly by police, has been relaxed, although movements are still restricted, and malls and restaurants operate on limited capacity. Filipinos aged less than 20 or above 60 years old are not allowed outside their homes, except for serious medical reasons.

The Human Rights Council should once again tackle the issue of rights abuses in the Philippines when it convenes this month. The government is expected to continue to deny the allegations rather than offer a constructive response. But as the government’s own statistics show, the atrocities in the “drug war” have worsened, even as the country suffers the worst in the region from the pandemic.

Killings in Philippines up 50 percent during pandemic

The grand jury’s decision in the Breonna Taylor case is infuriating. It was also, perhaps, inevitable.

While scholars will spend years debating whether a single indictment for “wanton endangerment”—for imperiling Taylor’s neighbors, not her—was a technically correct interpretation of Kentucky law, the grand jury’s decision fell far short of anything nearing meaningful accountability.

Of course their conclusion would likely have been different had the victim not been Black. We must continue to fight the racism that helped to drive this injustice, and work to rid our country of the bigotry that all-but-ensured this indefensible outcome.

Many individuals share the blame. It’s clear the cops involved in the “drug raid” acted with “extreme indifference to the value of human life,” as wanton endangerment is defined. Their superiors are also at fault—both for obtaining the legally questionable warrant and for the egregiously irresponsible way the officers delivered it. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s decision to mislead the grand jury and deliberately withhold information from the public should also be criticized.

The circumstances surrounding Taylor’s murder dispels the myth of “a few bad apples.” But it’s also critical we acknowledge culpability extends far past the spoiled bunch. Law enforcement’s institutional rot isn’t the only thing at fault.

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