1st Brandenburg Forum on Drugs and Development Policies - 'Taking Stock of UNGASS 2016 and the Challenges Ahead'

The 1st Brandenburg Forum on Drugs and Development Policies took place from July 11 to July 13, 2016, at the Hotel Schloss Lübbenau in picturesque Brandenburg, Germany. The forum was hosted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ), jointly with the Drug Commissioner of the Federal Government of Germany, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), and the Transnational Institute (TNI).

Within the framework of the Global Partnership on Drug Policies and Development (GPDPD) project, the meeting brought together 48 expert participants from Germany, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — as well as from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and several international, regional, and national civil society partners.

The 1st Brandenburg Forum aimed to provide a platform, protected by confidentiality rules, for an open and timely discussion after the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) 2016, reflecting on its positive outcomes and remaining challenges alike. This report summarizes exclusively the discussions during the meeting and does not reflect the institutional positions of the co-hosting parties.