Parallel Universes: Human Rights and International Drug Control

This video produced by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union highlights the human rights violations done against people all over the world as a result of the current international drug control system. The activists and researchers interviewed here recount the litany of abuses done in the name of drug control: torture, corporal punishment, overcrowding in prisons, death penalty for drug offences, denial of palliative care and HIV/AIDS treatment, among others.

As explained by the producers, the words of Paul Hunt, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health (2002-2008), at the 2008 Harm Reduction Conference are more valid than ever. The international drug control seems to be operating in a parallel universe from human rights law and it is the most vulnerable people who pay the price for this.

Click here to read Human Rights, Health and Harm Reduction: States’ amnesia and parallel universes, by Prof. Paul Hunt, member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

Follow us on twitter @ICHRDP

Narcotics Watchdog Turns Blind Eye to Rights Abuses

Patrick Gallahue’s most recent op-ed presents a strong argument against the reluctance of the International Narcotics Control Board to condemn the human rights violations done in the name of drug control.

The INCB, a quasi-judicial monitoring mechanism known and ‘guardian’ of the international drug control treaties, has remained silent about the imposition of forced labor at compulsory drug detention centres, despite the condemnation of twelve UN agencies this month. It has also refused to comment on the death penalty for drug offenders, arguing that it was beyond the mandate of the INCB and ’such sanctions were the “exclusive prerogative” of States.’

Read here Patrick Gallahue’s full analysis on the arguments by the INCB and how they contradict international human rights law.

A new language for the children of the drug wars

For decades, governments have used the rhetoric of war to describe their drug control efforts and rally their populations behind hardline policies they say will help protect children. Nayeli Urquiza, Research Fellow at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, argues it’s this very terminology that encourages the abuse of children by turning them into enemies of the state.

This guest editorial was originally published in the November issue of Matters of Substance, a publication of the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

For more information on this issue, read the book “Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People”. Available online or download the PDF at www.childrenofthedrugwar.org

Mexican human rights group asks ICC to probe president and top officials

Reuters reported that a group of human rights activits have requested the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a formal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Mexico.

They are asking the world’s first permanent war crimes court to investigate “the deaths of hundreds of civilians at the hands of the military and drug traffickers in Mexico, where more than 45,000 have died in drug-related violence since 2006.”

Netzai Sandoval, Mexican human rights lawyer and member of the group that filed the complaint to the ICC, told Reuters: “We want the prosecutor to tell us if war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Mexico, and if the president and other top officials are responsible.”

The petition, signed by 23,000 Mexican citizens, also calls for an investigation on the responsibility of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna, and Mexico’s army and navy commanders.

President Calderon has deployed 50,000 troops throughout the country since 2006, while the “federal police have swelled from 6,000 to 35,000.”

Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have documented systematic violations of citizens. According to a report published this November, HRW has documented evidence of 170 cases of torture, 24 extrajudicial killings and 39 forced disappearances in five Mexican states.

The Mexican government denies the complaint arguing that security policy issues cannot constitute an international crime.

To read the full story, click here.

Children of the Drug War: Webcast of the seminar held at LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology

The Mannheim Centre for Criminology (LSE) held on November 22 a specialty seminar to mark the publication of “Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies in Young People”.

The panel, chaired by Damon Barrett, editor of ‘Children of the Drug War’ included three of the contributors of ‘Children of the Drug War’. Jennifer Fleetwood, lecturer at the University of Kent, who talked about the impact of the ‘war on drugs’ on women and children in Ecuador’s prisons.

Michael Shiner, lecturer at the London School of Economics, talked about the limits of harm reduction in England and Wales and addressing drug use among young people. Steve Rolles, from Transform and author of ‘After of War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’, presented ideas about how to better protect children and young people through State regulation instead of prohibition. He argued that the prohibition paradigm instead of reducing the harms from drugs, has actually increased it, either by the availability of impure or contaminated drugs in the market or through the violence associated with actors trying to control the illlict drug market.

Damon Barrett concluded the discussion by saying that drug policy tends to obscure the human side of it. Underpinned by concepts and such as in “prison populations” and “seizures” drug control hides from our view the people targeted by drug control, and as a result we might run the risk of overlooking the harms caused by inadequate policies.

To listen to the seminar, click here

To download the book, click here

‘Drug Control, Human Rights, and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health: A Reply to Saul Takahashi’. Simon Flacks, Human Rights Quarterly

Human Rights Quarterly 33 (2011) 856–877

Abstract:

A recent article in this journal [Human Rights Quarterly] challenged claims that a human rights framework should be applied to drug control. This article questions the author’s assertions and reframes them in the context of socio-legal drug scholarship, aiming to build on the discourse concerning human rights and drug use. It is submitted that a rights-based approach is a necessary, indeed obligatory, ethical and legal framework through which to address drug use and that international human rights law provides the proper scope for determining where interferences with individual human rights might be justified on certain, limited grounds.

Download the article from Human Rights Quarterly

Simon Flacks is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Empowerment Through Human Rights College, University of Vienna, Austria. He holds an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, and formerly worked for the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) in London.

He is a research associate with the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy

Amicus curiae brief to Colombian Constitutional Court: Decriminalisation, the UN drug conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Is the decriminalisation of possession of controlled substances for personal use consistent with international law?

Damon Barrett, Project Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, has submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Constitutional Court of Colombia (Docket D-8371) in a case challenging the criminalisation of possession for personal use.

The submission (jointly with the International Harm Reduction Association, where Damon is senior human rights analyst) asks whether decriminalisation of personal possession of controlled drugs is permissible in international law, looking at the three core international drug conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They are treaties that are sometimes seen as precluding decriminalisation or moves away from ‘restrictive’ drug policies. Upon analysis, however, this is not the case. Four broad conclusions are made:

• There is nothing in international law to prohibit Colombia decriminalising possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use if it were found that to criminalise such possession would be unconstitutional
• The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not require criminalisation and there is a question mark about whether criminalisation for personal possession is an ‘appropriate measure’ for the purposes of the Convention.
• Tests of proportionality and arbitrariness require scrutiny of criminal laws applied to drug use.
• The burden of proof is on the State to justify criminalisation.

¿Es la despenalización de la posesión de sustancias controladas para uso personal consistente con el derecho internacional?

Este informe se centra en las convenciones internacionales sobre drogas y la Convención de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos del Niño. Son tratados que en ocasiones se interpretan como que prohíben la despenalización o las acciones que se distancien de las políticas “restrictivas” de drogas. Sin embargo, al analizarlas se demuestra que este no es el caso. Cuatro grandes conclusiones se han extraído de la discusión que sigue:

• No existe ninguna disposición en el derecho internacional que le prohíba a Colombia despenalizar la posesión de pequeñas cantidades de drogas para uso personal, al determinarse que la penalización de dicha posesión es inconstitucional.
• La Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño no exige la tipificación penal y existe duda acerca de si la penalización de la posesión para uso personal podría considerarse como una “medida adecuada” a la luz de los propósitos de la Convención.
• Los test de proporcionalidad y arbitrariedad requieren el escrutinio de las leyes penales aplicadas al uso de drogas.
• La carga de la prueba recae sobre el Estado para justificar la penalización.

The Limits of Equivalence: Ethical Dilemmas in Providing Care in Drug Detention Centers, R. Saucier et al, International Journal of Prisoner Health, 2010

International Journal of Prisoner Health 6(2):37-43, 2010

Abstract

This article considers the phenomenon of detention centers as a purported means of drug treatment, common throughout much of Asia. It describes the growth of the drug detention center model over the past decade – a system where people suspected of using drugs are rounded up on suspicion of drug use or a positive urine screening, and sent to closed settings without due process or means of appeal. Inside, detainees receive no effective drug treatment, little medical care, and insufficient food. Indeed, they are more likely to face what amounts to torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. In some countries, they are forced to work or face severe punishment. This article explores the ethical dilemmas inherent in providing care within an abusive system. For organizations offering health education, food, or even lifesaving medical care inside drug detention centers, what are the limits of providing ethical care, without risking legitimizing the system or building its capacity to detain more people? We explore how organizations might weigh the risks and benefits of their engagement.

Available for download via the Open Society Institute

Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN. Guardian 29 October 2010

‘Undesirables’ are swept from the streets before being detained without trial, say human rights groups

Ben Doherty, 28 October 2010

UN funding is being used to run a brutal internment camp for the destitute in Cambodia where detainees are held for months without trial, raped and beaten, sometimes to death, former inmates have told the Guardian.

The Prey Speu facility, 12 miles from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, is officially described as a “social affairs centre” offering education and healthcare to vulnerable people.

But human rights groups and former inmates say the centre is an illegal, clandestine prison, where people deemed “undesirable” by the government – usually drug users, sex workers and the homeless – are held for months without charge.

Men, women and children are housed together in a single building and are regularly beaten with planks, whipped with wires or threatened with weapons, according to witnesses.

It is alleged that guards have beaten three detainees to death and gang-rapes by the same body of men are reportedly common.

The UN’s own Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has described the conditions at Prey Speu as “appalling” with people “illegally confined and subject to a variety of abuses of power by the staff that included sub-humane conditions of detention, extortion, beating, rape, sometimes resulting in death and suicide”.

But the department that runs Prey Speu still gets money directly from the UN’s children’s fund, Unicef and the centre is also supported by several international NGOs.

Sok Chandara (not his real name) was picked up off the streets of the capital and taken to Prey Speu, “they said because it looked bad for the city to have people sleeping on the streets”. While police told him he was under arrest, he was never charged with an offence nor brought to court.

He was held with more than 100 men, women and children in a bare room and allowed out for just an hour a day. Some inmates were violent and abusive while others were seriously ill or injured.

Detainees were forced to go to the toilet in a bucket and medical care was irregular. Drinking water came from a fetid pond in which untreated sewage was emptied. Inmates were expected to bathe and wash their clothes in the same pond.

“It was like a hell. Many people were sick, people had diarrhoea, stomach aches because they were drinking dirty water, and there were no doctors,” Sok said.

Prey Speu has a daily food budget of 3,000 riels (47p) for each detainee. Generally, they are fed a watery rice gruel in a plastic bag twice a day.

Violence was a daily occurrence, Sok said. A guard beat him with a plank when he intervened to stop the guard hitting another man. “Sometimes, the guards just open the doors and come in and just beat people up, for no reason. They know no one can complain about the way they are being treated.”

According to the Cambodian human rights advocacy group LICADHO, three Prey Speu detainees have been beaten to death in front of other inmates.

Another five detainees have killed themselves, including two women who had been separated from their children.

Sok escaped by jumping over a wall and fleeing through rice paddies. He is still homeless, and fears being re-arrested and sent back. “Only the people who are locked up there know how bad it is, how scary it is. It doesn’t help people.”

The usual way out of Prey Speu is for detainees or their families to bribe the guards with sums from $50 to $200 (£32 to £125).

Visiting Prey Speu, the Guardian saw about 100 detainees being allowed out of the main building. There was no separation of men and women and most of the detainees were barefoot. At least 20 were children, some as young as four.

Guards at three-metre gates said the facility was a voluntary welfare centre and detainees were free to leave whenever they wanted. Asked why the gates were padlocked, guards said it was to keep people out.

Reports by Human Rights Watch document numerous rapes by guards and police there.

One sex worker told HRW she was raped by five police officers on her first night in detention, and by six officers the next evening. When she resisted, she was beaten.

Elaine Pearson, HRW’s Asia division deputy director, said the Cambodian government and donors had failed to act to close Prey Speu despite overwhelming evidence of abuse. “For years, there have been credible reports of rape, beatings and even deaths in custody by guards at Prey Speu, but nothing has been done to hold these abusers to account.”

She said international funding for the ministry of social affairs must be withdrawn.

The OHCHR still funds Cambodia’s transcultural psychosocial organisation to conduct psychological assessments in the centre. Mental health workers find many inmates are severely depressed and some are suffering psychosis, the organisation’s executive director, Dr Chhim Sotheara, said.

In July, Unicef called a meeting of concerned parties where international donors outlined the support they were providing to Prey Speu.

Richard Bridle, Unicef’s country director for Cambodia, declined an interview with the Guardian.

But in a statement Unicef said that it “technically and financially supports the ministry of social affairs, veterans and youth rehabilitation (MoSAVY) and related institutions to regulate, oversee and monitor child welfare and ensure provision of social and child protection”.

Last year, Unicef gave £390,000 to the ministry of social affairs. When similar criticisms of the Choam Chao youth rehabilitation centre emerged this year, Unicef withdrew £17,750 in funding and the centre immediately closed.

But Unicef says no direct assistance is given to Prey Speu.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, spent two days in Cambodia this week. During a brief press conference in Bangkok in advance of the visit, the Guardian submitted a question to Ban about the UN’s role in supporting the centres, but the request was rejected.

Cambodia’s ministry of social affairs has previously denied all allegations of abuse, saying that centres such as Prey Speu offer rehabilitation and vocational training. It defends its policy of “street sweeps” – removing beggars, the homeless and sex workers from the streets of the capital – saying they “provoke public disorder and affect [the] dignity and morality of Cambodian society”.

See also, International Drug Crime measures ‘lead to executions’

Thematic Factsheets on the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

The Press Service of the ECHR has compiled Factsheets by theme on the Court’s case-law and pending cases. These are very useful resources, including links to the cases referred to.

Of particular interest from a drug policy perspective are:

Police arrest

Prisoners’ health rights

Detention and mental health

Prison conditions

Child protection

Death penalty abolition

Mental health

Data protection

For regular updates and commentary on the ECHR, see ECHR Blog.

Next Page »