Beyond 2008: Vienna
meeting July 7-9, 2008
In 1998 the United Nations held a General Assembly Special
Session (UNGASS) on World Drugs. At this time, there was a mechanism
established to review progress in 2008. In his 10 year review, Antonio Maria
Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) stated that the global drug problem had been contained in some areas
and had worsened in others. Despite the parsing and spin, the basic message is
that the ambitious targets set in 1998 were not met.
Civil society (not government) input has been largely
excluded from UNODC processes. Compared to UNAIDS there is little input from
non governmental organizations (NGOs) even though we are the people that deal
with drug use and see the consequences of drug use and drug policy. To solicit
NGO input into the Drugs UNGASS, “Beyond 2008” scheduled for spring 2009, regional
meetings were held around the world in early 2008. The results of these
meetings were collated into a document consisting of a declaration and 3 resolutions.
Last week in Vienna
over 300 NGOs from around the world were charged with achieving a consensus
based final document. As unlikely as this seemed at the time, we were able to
come up with a product that was consensus based and also an improvement over
the original draft.
Of all the regional meetings that occurred this year, the US meeting
report was the one that was out of sync with the rest of the world. Not
surprisingly the meeting process had been hijacked so that any organization or
individual that did not agree with the Drug Free America Foundation was
excluded from attending. Canadian colleagues who asked to attend were told that
there was not room for one more seat. A second North American meeting took
place in Vancouver.
This meeting was open to all spectrums of the debate and was attended by many
North American harm reduction folks as well as drug policy reformers. Staunch
‘prohibitionists’ were invited to attend and a few did.
The Vienna
meeting opened with the usual “we need to all work together on this” ra ra
speeches except for Mr. Antonio Maria Costa who gave an odd, unfocused
presentation that did not dignify his position at the head of UNODC. It did not
compare to the excellent speech he gave at the May New York UN high level
meeting on HIV/AIDS. His rambling and conspiratorial comments about drug
legalizers (defined as people who want free drugs not a drug free world) were
decidedly out of sorts with the spirit of the occasion.
NGOs went line by line through the draft document to improve
and clarify its content. It quickly became apparent that there was a faction,
mostly from the United
States, which had bottom lines that they
intended to not deviate from. The words ‘harm reduction’, ‘people who use drugs’
and ‘drug policy’ were dangerous terms that were to be excluded although the
term harm reduction is already used throughout the UN including UNODC documents.
However it must have come as some surprise that they were unable to persuade
the majority of people in the room that this was a realistic expectation. It
was apparent that they were completely unused to defending their ideological
positions having never been put on the spot like this before. Conversely those
of us from the harm reduction and drug policy world have been arguing and
defending ourselves for years. Every time there was a sticking point,
interested parties would troop out of the meeting room and negotiate the issue
until a compromise was reached. Sometimes this was easy and at others it was
nauseating such as when we wanted to highlight ‘people who use drugs’ as an
affected population in the declaration. However compromise means that no-one
wins outright so I assume that those opposed to including drug users in the
solution-finding process felt as bad as I did. The irony of this particular
discussion was that although they were trying to exclude drug users from the
process the room contained a bunch of people who use a variety of different
illicit substances.
Although this was a NGO forum, governments were allowed to
observe the process. Only one government actually interfered with the meeting.
Any guesses? Yes the US
government brazenly passed notes and whispered in the ears of folks from the US such as the
Drug Free America Foundation and Sundial. Our government rep, a Ms. June
Sivilli, had no shame in marching through the UN meeting room and causing disruption
after disruption. Of course my feelings were deeply hurt as I cannot imagine
the Dutch, British or Australian governments not introducing themselves to
their country’s NGO delegates. As one of those delegates alongside the ACLU,
Break the Chains, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and others didn’t we
deserve at least a handshake and a thank you for our good work?
At the end of the day we ended up with an ok, not superb,
document.
( http://www.harmreduction.org/downloads/Beyond%202008.pdf )
We showed that consensus can be reached and that despite the
presence of disruptive elements, NGOs can work across disciplines and
experience. This document has a certain amount of meaning but the intermediate
prize is to have meaningful input from civil society into the UN global drugs
world. We frequently referenced the UNAIDS as a model for how this can be
achieved. However civil society was pretty much fighting governments around HIV
not each other. Drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction NGOs around the
world are not quite in the same place as each other at this moment in time. To
get our voices heard we have to recognize common ground so that we can have
influence at UN forums. We need the upcoming UNGASS review to produce a
political declaration that will shift the focus of international drug policy
towards a human rights, public health based approach that will serve rather
than hurt drug users.
For those of us from the States, the good, the bad and the
demented, we are grappling with domestic as well as foreign policy in a public
arena. I don’t think that’s a bad thing as it shows that despite our
government’s policies there are good people here. The longer term goal is have
the UN member states look at the drug conventions and make them more meaningful
in the 21st century. Since 1998, on the global stage harm reduction
has become a recognized strategy for addressing the negative consequences of
drug use so we have come a long way in ten years.
The work now is to ensure that this document is actually
taken seriously at the Drugs UNGASS next spring. Congress needs to be primed on
its existence and the State Department needs to get on board. As this pitiful
administration limps to its conclusion, maybe there’s an opportunity to right
some of the wrongs we’ve wrought upon the world. For those with an interest,
there will be a teach in at the Miami
conference.
For more info on what went down last week, the ACLU and IHRA
put together blogs also check out TNI’s chapter 3 in this report:
http://www.tni.org/detail_pub.phtml?&know_id=247&menu=11d
Scroll down the page and read backwards: http://blog.aclu.org/category/drug-law-reform/
Same with this one: http://www.ihrablog.net/
And check out HCLU’s videos on You Tube as they start
appearing.
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