This report reflects a short summary of one year (2012) of ethnographic observations and ‘informal conversations’ with various stakeholders across Saint Lucia, a small Caribbean nation. The effort was undertaken to assess the profile of youth gangs and their members in order to add depth to existing analysis on gangs in the Caribbean by using one country as a model. This summary of the report focuses on the interaction between the cannabis and cocaine markets, and the role of youth in that trade on the one hand, and the increase in violence indicators on the other.

The Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) and individual member states face shared challenges of youth involvement in crime, violence, gangs and other anti-social activities. It is not uncommonly heard the “drug problem” is to be blamed for this. This briefing wants to show this relation is far more complex and often misunderstood.

Decriminalize cannabis cultivation and possession for personal use

Augment the education of young males with alternative educational opportunities

Create micro economic activities that would allow young people to legitimately earn a decent wage.

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

Making a mountain out of a molehill: Myths on youth and crime in Saint Lucia

UK taxpayers’ money has enabled as many as 2,917 brutal executions in Iran and more than 112 pending death sentences in Pakistan, a report from legal action charity Reprieve has shown. Many of the sentences have been handed down to women and children, as well as a number of British nationals.

Reprieve’s European Aid for Executions report is the result of a two year investigation which sourced classified overseas death row data and compared it with reports on European aid to foreign police forces. It found that UK funding routinely comes with targets encouraging arrests likely to result in death sentences, despite a Government commitment to encourage global abolition of the death penalty.

The research confirms that over the last ten years Britain has given more money than any other European country to drug police in Iran and Pakistan; countries which aggressively pursue the death penalty for drug offences and boast the world’s highest per capita execution rate (Iran) and the world’s largest death row population (Pakistan).

Reprieve found that the UK has given more than £20 million to drug agents in these countries, frequently citing capital convictions secured in formal measurements of the money’s success. This funding is channelled through the UN’s Office for Drugs and Crime, and goes toward training, intelligence-sharing and equipment used for pursuing alleged drug offenders (including body scanners, sniffer dogs and night vision goggles).

British support of this nature can be directly tied to at least 2,917 executions in Iran and 112 death sentences in Pakistan, based on the periods over which British aid was provided and the law-enforcement led “supply control” operations it supported. While drug offences made up the main charges in all of these cases, both countries’ drug courts fall woefully short of international standards, and in Iran’s case drug allegations have been used as a pretext for the persecution of political dissidents.

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

European aid for executions

该审查评估乌克兰联盟的工作是否是一个“良好做法”以及其是否能在其他国家试用。英语版本拥有更多信息，请阅读下文。

随时掌握与药物政策发展相关的最新信息。

The development of a HIV prevention, treatment and care programme in Ukraine by the Government has been spearheaded through support from Alliance Ukraine and its many local NGO partners across the country. A major achievement in this regard is that over the past 3 years, HIV prevalence among PWID under the age of 25 years has decreased. Such a reduction is largely due to the implementation of a comprehensive HIV prevention programme, including harm reduction, led by Alliance Ukraine and its partners, a response that began at the end of 2000 and was accelerated from 2004 to the present day at national scale. It is the national scale of this response by Alliance Ukraine through its partners that is of particular note for possible replication elsewhere.

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance is an international nongovernmental organization with its international secretariat in Brighton, United Kingdom, and currently comprises 40 nationally based, independent, civil society organizations around the world as well as seven Technical Support Hubs, all of which are dedicated to ending AIDS through community action. The Alliance seeks to work with communities through local, national and global action on HIV, health and human rights and is committed to collective action that will lead to a world without AIDS in which the lives of all human beings are of equal value, and everyone has the right to access the HIV information and services that they need for a healthy life.

The purpose of this review is to document the work of Alliance Ukraine and to assess whether such work is a ‘good practice’ that could be replicated in other countries faced with a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic driven largely by unsafe injecting behaviours. The review was undertaken during July 2013 and data was updated were available in April 2014. Criteria have been developed to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the full range of support given by Alliance Ukraine and its local NGO and Government partners relating to the implementation, management and ongoing development of the national HIV prevention programme throughout Ukraine.

欧洲的良好实践：通过注射使用毒品者的艾滋病预防

Good practices in Europe: HIV prevention for people who inject drugs

这个案例分析提供了一些面向于在美国的年青人的主要药物政策问题的概述，并且该案例关注毒品政策和伤害减少对于美国年轻人的影响。英语版本拥有更多信息，请阅读下文。

While the United States of America (USA) has become infamous for having the largest prison population in the world as a result of its regressive drug policy, the impacts of its drug policy towards young people who use drugs are rarely discussed. This case study offers an overview of some of the main drug policy issues facing young people in the USA, looking at the impacts of the drug policy and harm reduction on young people, drawing data and evidence from official national statistics and experiences of young people who use drugs themselves. This paper then concludes with a series of recommendations for potential reform areas.

IDPC/Youth RISE案例研究系列：美国的药物政策、危害减少和年轻人

Canada’s Shame: Parliament considers regressive drug policy bill

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada found that supervised consumption services save lives, ordering that Vancouver’s Insite be granted an exemption by the federal Ministry of Health allowing it to continue to operate. Flouting the spirit and the letter of this ruling, the Government of Canada devised Bill C-2 (

An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

), legislation that would make supervised consumption services harder to establish. (The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Pivot Legal Society helped to craft 21 amendments to this bill, put forward at committee, and all were – as expected – defeated by the government.) Bill C-2 could soon become law. Please read 

An Injection of Reason: Critical Analysis of BillC-2

,the Legal Network’s joint rights-based submission (with theCanadian Drug Policy Coalition) to parliamentarians.

An injection of reason: Critical analysis of bill C-2 in Canada

IDPC/Youth RISE case study series: Drug policy, harm reduction and young people in the United States

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses in Mexico suffer unnecessarily from severe pain and other symptoms because they cannot access adequate end-of-life care, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 122-page report, “Care When There Is No Cure: Ensuring the Right to Palliative Care in Mexico,” documents the lack of access for many patients to pain relief and other assistance known as palliative care. Although Mexico’s health law explicitly grants people with terminal illness a right to palliative care, the service is offered almost exclusively at large specialist hospitals.

Almost 600,000 people die every year in Mexico. Estimates by the World Health Organization and the Worldwide Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance suggest that more than half of these people require palliative care.

Care when there is no cure - Ensuring the right to palliative care in Mexico

Two U.S. states have legalized recreational marijuana, and more may follow; the Obama administration has conditionally accepted these experiments. Such actions are in obvious tension with three international treaties that together commit the United States to punish and even criminalize activity related to recreational marijuana.

In essence, the administration asserts that its policy complies with the treaties because they leave room for flexibility and prosecutorial discretion. That argument makes sense on a short-term, wait-and-see basis, but it will rapidly become implausible and unsustainable if legalization spreads and succeeds.

To avoid a damaging collision between international law and changing domestic and international consensus on marijuana policy, the United States should seriously consider narrowly crafted treaty changes. It and other drug treaty partners should begin now to discuss options for substantive alterations that create space within international law for conditional legalization and for other policy experimentation that seeks to further the treaties’ ultimate aims of promoting human health and welfare.

Marijuana legalisation is an opportunity to modernise international drug treaties

本研究探讨如何以及在何种程度上倡导人权可以进一步提高伤害减少策略和服务的有效性。英语版本拥有更多信息，请阅读下文。

Protection of the human rights of People who Use Drugs (PUD) is important, not only because the rights of these people must be respected, protected and fulfilled, but also because it is an essential precondition to improve their health (Jürgens et al., 2010). Therefore it is important that harm reduction organisations advocate for the human rights of PUD (Beyrer et al., 2010). Organisations working on harm reduction, however, struggle in advocating for human rights, which is a major problem, according to experts such as Friedman et al. (2012). Studies and guidelines are written about how to advocate for the human rights of people who use drugs (Kaplan et al., 2009). However, it is unclear to what extent small organisations succeed to implement these guidelines in advocating practices and make use of a human rights framework. Therefore this study examines how and to what extent advocacy for human rights of People who Use Drugs is currently used and how human rights advocacy can further improve the effectiveness of harm reduction strategies and services.

Qualitative explorative methods were used, in addition a survey. Fourteen semi‐structured interviews were done Interviews where done with respondents from harm reduction organisations and national advocacy organisations based in eight countries: Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Georgie, Nepal, Indonesia and Kenya. These interviews where complemented with three interviews with experts from international advocacy organisations in the field of drug use. The survey was handed out during a meeting including representatives of organisations based in the eight countries: sixteen surveys where obtained. The interviews where recorded and transcribed afterwards. The transcripts were analysed by using coding techniques in three different steps; open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The results of the analysis where when possible compared with the results of the survey.

The results of this research show that all organisations included in the research do advocate for the human rights of PUD. However, some organisations are not aware of practising advocacy and most organisations do not plan advocacy activities as being advocacy activities. Organisations reckon face to face communication and organising workshops as the most effective ways of bringing the advocacy message. Most organisations see (social) media as important tools as well, but do not know how to make use of these tools properly. In addition, important differences were found between organisations. For example, the expertise level of advocacy differs between organisations. The main difference in expertise was found in the application of human rights theory, which is seen as an important tool for advocacy according to international advocacy experts. Most organisations have little knowledge of human rights. Next to this, most organisations have difficulties in documenting human rights violations.

倡导管制药物使用者的人权

这个报告强调了关于国际调度控制受管制药物的失败，并提出确保以健康和证据为基础的体系的重要建议。 英文版本拥有更多信息，请阅读下文。

While often viewed as an obscure technical issue, the problem of scheduling lies at the core of the functioning of the international drug control system.

Scheduling – the classification of a substance within a graded system of controls and restrictions, or 'schedules' – must take place in order for a substance to be included in the international control framework, and determines the type and intensity of controls to be applied.

The issue has become a contemporary flashpoint for strains and tensions surrounding the general orientation of the present regime of drug control and the international Conventions which reside at its heart.

The approaching United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on 'the world drug problem' of 2016 may provide an opportunity for the re-examination of current theory and practice in relation to scheduling, and to the elaboration of improved arrangements.6 Amongst the most prominent of present stresses are disputes surrounding the proper role of UN drug control bodies in the scheduling process – especially those of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the WHO. However, we will suggest that the part played by the CND and states parties is also fraught with difficulties.

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国际药物管制系统的安排

该报告呼吁国际捐助者，各国政府和联合国机构采取具体行动来解决资金危机。 英文版本拥有更多信息，请阅读下文。

Funding for HIV-related harm reduction programmes globally is in crisis. There can be no ‘AIDS free generation’ without targeted efforts with and for people who inject drugs. Yet funding for harm reduction falls dangerously short of estimated need. While this has been the case for some time, the situation looks set to deteriorate with changing donor policies and national government neglect.

This failure to invest will bring an exponential rise in HIV transmission which in turn will cause additional costs to government health sectors.

This report investigates international donor commitments, both multilateral and bilateral, as well as national investments in harm reduction. It calls on international donors, national governments and UN agencies to take concrete actions to address the funding crisis.

Watch this video presenting the main findings of the report at the International AIDS Conference, July 2014:

Read this infographic for key data on harm reduction across the world:

Publications from IDPC Members