The WHO's ECDD meeting will assess the critical reviews of a handful of substances, including the coca leaf, guiding future international scheduling decisions, with major implications for Indigenous rights.
On the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, IDPC's Ann Fordham highlights how the international drug control regime harms Indigenous communities, and how the WHO’s coca leaf review offers a chance to right a longstanding injustice.
The WHO’s long-overdue review of the coca leaf is a historic test of whether global drug policy can finally confront its colonial roots and uphold Indigenous rights.
Published 14 May 2025, WHO’s new guidance calls for bold, balanced drug policies that ensure fair access to controlled medicines. It updates 2011 rules with sharper focus on equity, harm reduction, pricing, regulation, and education - anchored in health rights and transparency.
Faced with devastating funding cuts, countries and health ministries must now focus on long-term, community-centred solutions to maintain service delivery.
IDPC calls on WHO's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) to rectify the historical error of the coca leaf scheduling, affirming Indigenous rights, and ensuring their involvement throughout the review process.
WHO improves its information-sharing process by introducing a new single-source repository, representing the only online, freely accessible collection of information and reports on new psychoactive substances and medicines.
INPUD, WHO and UNODC update WHO's Consolidated guidelines on HIV, viral hepatitis and STI prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care in relation to people who inject drugs.
IDPC call on the ECDD to consider the profound impacts of legal and policy choices that may be triggered by international scheduling and to take the lessons from past national controls duly into account before taking any further steps towards bringing kratom under international control.