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Civil Society Forum on Drugs addresses key recommendations to the HDG on the draft declaration of the 2019 CND Ministerial Segment

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From 14-22 March, the annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is organized in Vienna, this year focusing on the assessment of the UN’s 10-year program on drug policy (2009-2019) and the debate on whether or not to adopt a new declaration for the next decade. This session will also decide whether to approve or not the changes proposed by the World Health Organization regarding the legal status of cannabis.

As UN member states are currently negotiating the declaration to be adopted at the 2019 UN Ministerial Segment on drugs, the Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD) -in which organization Diogenis participates as a member –  wishes to offer the following recommendations to the EU and its member states, with the hope that these will be helpful for the next stage of the negotiations process.

More specifically, the CSFD calls “on the EU and its member states to continue to champion the fundamental principles of evidence, human rights, health, development, and the role of civil society throughout the negotiations process – and to continue to promote UNGASS implementation and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the basis for the post-2019 global drug strategy. As such, the CSFD believes that it would be counterproductive to adopt a resolution that significantly rolls back on progress made at the 2016 UNGASS. This means that, as the negotiations continue in the next few weeks, a decision might need to be made as to whether no consensus – and no declaration in March – is preferable to a weak outcome that would reverse the hard-fought gains of the UNGASS. That being said, we remain at your disposal for further discussions, or requests for specific language that would be helpful to the negotiations”

Read the full document here

Press Release: International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) evaluates UN’s 10-year program

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The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) presented today the report “Taking stock: A decade of drug policy – A civil society shadow report” in Vienna today. The findings are a response from the International Consortium, a network of 174 non-governmental organizations around the world, in the failure of  governments and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to substantially evaluate the ten-year program they adopted in 2009. Member states of the UN declared in 2009 that they “will eliminate or substantially reduce and reduce measurably illicit drug supply and demand, trafficking, diversion of precursors and money laundering.” The report finds that UN Member States are still pursuing a policy that causes devastating effects on health, human rights, security and development, without reducing global supply and use of illicit drugs.

According to UNODC’s annual reports on drugs, over the past decade there has been an increase of 145% of drug-related deaths, noting that in 2015 drug deaths already amounted to 450,000
• At least 3,940 people have been executed for drug offenses over the past decade, while 33 countries have maintained the death penalty for drug-related offenses in violation of international standards.
• About 27,000 out-of-court executions took place in the Philippines as part of its repressive drug policy.
• More than 71,000 overdose deaths in 2017 are the current policy review in the United States of America.
• The global epidemic of pain resulting from restrictions on access to controlled medicines remains. The drug control system has left 75% of the world’s population without adequate access to pain relief.
• Mass imprisonment fueled by the criminalization of people using drugs – with one in five detainees being in prison for drug offenses – mainly for personal use. ”
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Open letter to WHO & UNODC to revise guidelines on “International Standards for the Treatment of Drug Use Disorders”

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The 61st session of the UN Commission on Drugs, in which Diogenes participates as a consutative NGO on the UN ECOSOC Council, is taking place in Vienna from 12 to 16 March. Today, March 15, during the Session, a discussion is held on the results of the WHO and the UNODC joint work on new “international standards for the treatment of drug use disorders”.

“Diogenis” a few days ago, together with 187 other organizations active in the field of psychoactive substances treatment, harm reduction and politics, co-signed an open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), calling for a revision of the final text before it is published and/or promoted internationally, indicating the following:

  • The paper contains many assertions not supported evidentiarily or cited.
  • The phrase ‘harm reduction’ is entirely missing from the document.
  • The paper contains crude generalisations and many stigmatising and pathologising assertions.
  • Notably, the paper contains numerous implications that people who use drugs and have drug dependencies are dangerous; cannot exercise agency and self-determination; are sick; are unreliable; are bad family members; are bad employees. Needless to say, such crude generalisations are deeply stigmatising and offensive, not to mention unempirical.
  • The paper fails to identify criminalisation and prohibition as being responsible for driving much drug related harm and harm associated with drug dependency; instead, it myopically asserts that because drugs are harmful, they are criminalised, without noting that it is due to the fact that they are criminalised that they are so harmful.
  • The paper’s active promotion Naltrexone is very concerning, given its lack of evidentiary support: Naltrexone is promoted in the document as of equal value to interventions that are (in contrast to Naltrexone) empirically justified and greatly beneficial; this is arguably used to eclipse interventions with proven efficacy, such as methadone, buprenorphine, and diamorphine/morphine prescribing, due to the document’s clear advocation of abstinence-based recovery.

You can read the signed letter of civil society organizations here.

The LADDER project was concluded, and Diogenis was part of it!

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The final conference of project LADDER was held in Strasbourg on 21-22 November 2017, and constituted a key opportunity to create new bonds and strengthen existing partnerships for the localisation of SDGs in the next years.

The conference marked three years of joint work within an extremely ambitious project, co-funded by the European Union and led by ALDA, gathering 27 partners and 19 associates from 19 EU and 17 non EU-countries. The unanimous commitment to continue the great work done so far in the field of development education is a great satisfaction for all of us, as well as the sign of LADDER’s sustainability. Read more

“Diogenis” co-singns international statement to end extrajudicial executions at Philippines.

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NGO “Diogenis Drug Policy Dialogue” co-signed, along with 200 other civil society organizations, a statement calling for urgent measures to put an end to the extrajudicial executions policy of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and to seek justice. The statement was made public on Thursday 9/11 shortly before US President Donald Trump (who repeatedly praised Duterte’s drug war) met for the first time with Duterte during the Asian Nations Summit in the Philippines (ASEAN ) on 12-14 November. The meeting of the two Presidents took place today and, as expected, the issue of human rights and extrajudicial executions was not discussed.

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Annual meeting of CSF on Drugs: “Diogenis” was there!

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The Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSF), an expert group of the European Commission with more than forty members representing leading European NGOs, held its annual plenary meeting in Brussels last week (7-8/11). The Forum has become an important voice, but it needs more inclusion and funding from EU institutions. “Diogenis” is an official member of the CSFD and at that meeting was represented by Nikos Stergiou.
The Forum, is a diverse group of NGOs representing different fields, regions and ideological approaches an it has four working groups. Read more

New global overview from HRI: Death penalty does not stop drug crimes.

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The 4th edition of the series ‘Globar Overview’ by Harm Reduction International on the question of the death penalty for offenses related to drugs are available here!

The supreme right, that of life, is violated in at least 33 countries of the world, where the law provides the death penalty for offenses related to drugs.

We support the immediate abolition of the death penalty and asking for policies that will ensure the safety, security, public health, respect for human rights and the fundamental principles of freedom of all persons without discrimination.

Diogenis signs the IDPC Open Letter to UNODC & INCB for the extrajudicial killings in Philippines

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LONDON (2nd August 2016) – Civil society groups from across the globe, including prominent human rights NGOs, have called on UN drug control authorities to urge an immediate stop to the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders in the Philippines. Since 10th May 2016, more than 700 people have been killed by police and vigilantes in the Philippines for being suspected of using or dealing drugs, as a direct result of recently-elected President Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime within six months.

Until now, however, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) – the UN agencies responsible for global drug control – have failed to condemn the Philippines for these gross human rights violations committed in the name of drug control.

Over 300 non-governmental organisations – NGO Diogenis among them –  today sent an open letter to the UNODC Executive Director, Mr. Yury Fedotov, and the INCB President, Mr. Werner Sipp, asking them to take immediate action aimed at putting a stop to the extrajudicial killings.

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Call from the CSFD

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“It is critical that the voices of civil society organisations working in the area of drugs are heard in national and international forums”.

The Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD)* created a questionnaire for civil society organisations with the aim of identifying the current situation concerning Civil Society engagement in national drug policy across Europe. The information you provide will be used to draft a report for consideration by the forum at its plenary meeting in November 2016. Read more

Re-interpreting the International Conventions on Drugs

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Translation of the UNODC document: “Drug policy provisions from the International Drug Control Conventions”

On March 2014, as part of the preparations for the high-level review on the implementation of the Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation towards an Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem by Member States , UNODC prepared the document “Drug Policy Provisions from the International Drug Control Conventions”. This document is discussing the implications of the three International Conventions for drug policy.

Realizing the outmost importance of this document, DIOGENIS took the initiative of translating the aforementioned document in Greek and Serbian languages. 

The objective behind this initiative is to enhance a dialogue both at local and regional level, in order to bring about substantial changes in the way conventions are interpreted and implemented by governments.

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