Sandra Ka Hon Chu, Supreme Court of Canada orders Minister of Health to exempt supervised injection site from criminal prohibition on drug possession, Human Rights and Drugs, Vol.2, No.I, 2012

CASE SUMMARY

Supreme Court of Canada orders Minister of Health to exempt supervised injection site from criminal prohibition on drug possession Attorney General v. PHS Community Services Society, 2011 SCC 44 (Supreme Court of Canada)

Sandra Ka Hon Chu analyses the decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which ordered the federal Minister of Health to grant Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site, an extended exemption from the criminal prohibition on drug possession in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), thus permitting the health facility to continue to operate. In its September 2011 decision, the Court held that while the CDSA provisions were applicable to Insite as valid exercises of the federal government’s criminal law power, the Minister’s refusal to extend Insite’s CDSA exemption violated the Canadian constitution.

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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.

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New book on Convention of the Rights of the Child and Narcotic Drugs

A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 33: Protection from Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances

By Damon Barrett and Philip E. Veerman

This volume constitutes a commentary on Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is part of the series, A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides an article by article analysis of all substantive, organizational and procedural provisions of the CRC and its two Optional Protocols. For every article, a comparison with related human rights provisions is made, followed by an in-depth exploration of the nature and scope of State obligations deriving from that article. The series constitutes an essential tool for actors in the field of children’s rights, including academics, students, judges, grassroots workers, governmental, non- governmental and international officers. The series is sponsored by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office.

Biographical note

Damon Barrett is Senior Human Rights Analyst with London-based Harm Reduction International and cofounder of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy. He is an editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy, and editor of Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People (IDEA, iDebate Press, New York and Amsterdam, 2011).

Philip E. Veerman is a psychologist at Bouman mental health services in Rotterdam, where he is responsible for the professional training programme for health psychologists. He is an independent expert of the courts in the Netherlands.

To find out more, go to the website of Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

‘Harm Reduction and Human Rights’, D. Barrett and P. Gallahue, Interights Bulletin, Winter 2011.

Human Rights and Abuses to Health Care, Interights Bulletin, Winter 2011, Volume 16, Number 4.

Harm Reduction and Human Rights

Abstract

‘Harm reduction’ is a phrase that may be unfamiliar to many in the human rights field despite the fact that its ethos and way of working is very close to it. Based on pragmatism, evidence, and compassion, harm reduction has been often misunderstood, side-lined, and isolated from human rights discourse. This paper shows how harm reduction has made important strides in human rights bodies of the United Nations. However, its application is critically absent anti-narcotics policy despite evidence of grave human rights violations done in the name of the “war on drugs” . The paper concludes that jurisprudence and scholarship around the human rights dimensions of harm reduction will be critical in understanding what works in protecting people from drug-related harms, but what is appropriate and necessary in a democratic society to achieve this legitimate aim

Download the full version of the publication.

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

Vancouver safe injection facility, Insite, wins historic Supreme Court case

In its third successive court win against Government efforts to shut it down, Insite, North America’s only safe injection facility, has been allowed to remain open.

In a 9-0 unanimous verdict the Supreme Court ordered Canada’s Minister of Health to grant Insite the necessary exemption to the country’s drug laws to allow it to remain open.

The Court also set out criteria which should be considered in future such decisions, and stated that when a facility brings the kinds of benefits that Insite has displayed while not generating harms to public security, such exemptions should generally be given.

A case commentary from the lower courts appeared in the first volume of the International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy. A case commentary on this decision will appear in volume II.

The full decision may be read online at http://scc.lexum.org/en/2011/2011scc44/2011scc44.html

CBC News in Canada also has detailed coverage http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/29/bc-insite-supreme-court-ruling-advancer.html

‘Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the impact of drug policies on young people’ Damon Barrett (ed)

‘Children of the Drug War’ is a unique collection of original essays, edited by Damon  Barrett (Project Director at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy), that investigates the impacts of the war on drugs on children, young people and their  families. With contributions from around the world, providing different perspectives and utilizing a  wide range of styles and approaches including ethnographic studies, personal accounts and  interviews, the book asks fundamental questions of national and international drug control systems:

• What have been the costs to children and young people of the war on drugs?
• Is the protection of children from drugs a solid justification for current policies?
• What kinds of public fears and preconceptions exist in relation to drugs and the drug trade?
• How can children and young people be placed at the forefront of drug policies?

Four thematic sections address:

• Production and trade
• Race, class and law enforcement
• Families and drug policy
• Drug use and dependence

The book is published by the International Debate Education Association (iDebate Press). It is available for purchase in hard copy from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and other outlets.

A pdf of the full book and pdfs of each of its four sections are available for free download. It may also be read online.

‘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

‘HIV/AIDS at the UN: Battleground of the war on drugs’, Damon Barrett in openDemocracy

‘Zero new infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS related deaths’.

As objectives go this one is difficult to find fault with. Unless your concern is the protection of punitive drug policies.

Today world leaders arrive in New York for a UN summit on AIDS where a new Political Declaration will be adopted, an international agreement intended to guide the response to HIV/AIDS until 2020. The negotiations are, in fact, already over for the Political Declaration that will emerge from this meeting. These have been taking place in the last few days with lengthy, heated debates on many issues from men who have sex with men to intellectual property and access to anti-retroviral drugs to human rights. Last night the final round of negotiations ended. All that remains is tidying up the document. Unfortunately, one message of the document is clear – many states are willing and ready sacrifice lives and HIV responses in order to protect punitive drug control systems.

As the post-negotiation dust settles in New York (swirling invisibly around the world leaders in attendance) we are left with the following in relation to injecting drug use and HIV:

An HIV/AIDS declaration with strong ‘war on drugs’ language inserted for the first time ever. According to the document ‘the drug problem continues to constitute a serious threat to, among others, public health and safety and the well-being of humanity, in particular children and young people and their families’. This is the very basis of the justification for so many human rights abuses in the war on drugs around the world – and for the denial of HIV prevention measures for people who inject drugs. Two of the most severe costs of the war on drugs. It goes on to say that ‘much more needs to be done to effectively combat the world drug problem’. It is a paragraph about cracking down on drugs, rather than effective responses to HIV.

A document that backtracks on earlier commitments on HIV prevention for injecting drug users. Sure there were victories for those States committed to tackling HIV, such as the listing of at risk groups, and the commitment to ‘work towards’ reducing HIV among people who inject by 80% by 2020, and the newly included mention of UN guidelines on HIV prevention for injecting drug users. But they are pyrrhic victories. Mentioning injecting drug users means little unless backed up with commitments, and the language is such that all States have to do is ‘consider’ the programmes alluded to – just have a think about them. And only if their national laws allow it. An 80% reduction simply will not be reached with these limitations. In the previous landmark political declarations on AIDS from 2001 and 2006 UN member states agreed together to ‘intensify efforts’. Not this time.

At the risk of playing a broken record, I must reiterate the statistics. There are an estimated 15.9 million people who inject drugs worldwide. 30% of new HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa are related top unsafe injecting practices. In Eastern Europe and East Asia this is far higher. Less than three cents per day per injecting drug user is spent on HIV prevention. This is a major component of global HIV epidemics and a major gap in the response.

There is no point at this stage in diplomacy as to the States responsible for this shameful outcome. Italy, Russia, the Vatican, Singapore and Iran (on behalf of the Arab Group) led the charge against HIV prevention related to drug use (I would urge interested readers to ask their MPs to find out what their Government’s position was).

Singapore suggested the language of ‘harm elimination’ at one stage (a scary choice of words from such a prolific executor of drug offenders). Italy sought ‘risk reduction’, a different concept to harm reduction which deflects attention from HIV prevention goals.

The negative contribution of Iran and the Arab Group is saddening following the first ever International Harm Reduction conference in the Middle East having taken place this year in Lebanon. There we saw academics, service providers, activists and people who use drugs from the region speaking openly about the need for harm reduction scale up. At these negotiations, to ensure a tough stance on drugs and to protect State interests in punitive drug control systems, these governments have betrayed their people’s commitment to health and human rights.

But perhaps the most egregious behaviour was that of Russia given the scale of the injecting driven HIV epidemic within its own borders (There are an estimated 1.6 million opiate users in Russia with unsafe injecting accounting for 80% of new infections. HIV prevalence is 37% among people who inject). Nationally, in response, Russia has banned opioid substitution therapy until 2020, one of the core HIV prevention interventions for opiate injectors; it has branded needle and syringe programmes ‘drug propaganda’ and refuses to fund them, and has promised to clamp down on the promotion of harm reduction. At these negotiations Russia has sought to legitimise that neglect, and has succeeded. It can now point to its national laws as justification for allowing its citizens to get sick and die. In October, Russia will host the MDG 6 Forum on halting and reversing the spread of HIV. Based on its behaviour at home and at the UN, it has no legitimacy whatsoever to do so. Russia has shown that it has no desire to reach MDG 6.

Against so many opponents, the many issues under attack and the UN desire for consensus there was little the numerous supportive states and civil society organisations could do except to limit the damage. Their efforts are clear to those who have followed the process and the developing wording of the declaration.

All of this comes after a year of significant events in drug policy and HIV/AIDS campaigns. Let’s go back a year to the 18^th International AIDS Conference in Vienna. There the Vienna Declaration was launched. It was the official conference declaration, calling for reform of the international drug control system in order to meet the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS and endorsed by cities, Nobel laureates, former heads of state, scientists, lawyers, academics, researchers and activists from around the world. There are over 20,000 of them to date.

In April 2011, Harm Reduction International launched the Beirut Declaration on HIV and Injecting Drug Use. Targeted specifically at the UN meeting on AIDS the declaration reminded UN member states of their commitments on HIV prevention and injecting drug use made in the declarations of 2001 and 2006. The Beirut Declaration has been endorsed by hundreds of HIV/AIDS, development, drugs, human rights, children’s and humanitarian organisations.

At the end of May, the online campaign organisation Avaaz launched a petition to call for an end to the war on drugs. It has now amassed over 600,000 signatures. A massive achievement.

The Avaaz campaign coincided with the launch of the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, by far and away the most prestigious and high level group of people ever to call for global drug policy reform. It included former heads of state, a sitting Prime Minster and the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The report was launched on 2^nd June.

So here we are, less than a week later, the first opportunity for progress. Not a dent. Not even on the basics of harm reduction. What this means is that even while a prestigious group of former world leaders (and one active) showed how much the ‘drug war’ of the past has failed, sitting governments cannot collectively agree to progress, even on the most basic of needs.

At the UN meeting on AIDS over the next two days expect lofty speeches and strong words. Some, let’s be fair, will be sincere and many states will act upon these words. But the speeches will be soon forgotten while the Political Declaration will remain and will affect international negotiations on HIV/AIDS for years to come. As usual AIDS has managed to expose prejudice and the ugly face of politics in a way that few issues can. Harm reduction, for its part, has again shown to be a threat to the punitive status quo of drug control such that some states are willing to sacrifice lives and scuttle international negotiations on global health concerns to protect it.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy has said, clearly and insightfully, what needs to be done. The UN High Level Meeting on AIDS will show just how far from that reality we really are. Indeed, the negotiations have shown how far we are from even a reasonable discussion about it.

Published at http://www.opendemocracy.net/damon-barrett/hivaids-at-un-battleground-of-war-on-drugs

D. Barrett & P. Veerman, Children who use Drugs: The Need for More Clarity on State Obligations in International Law, International Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy, Vol I, 2010

This article focuses on drugs and the rights of the child. It is an important debate given that the Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically refers to drugs, the only core UN human rights treaty to do so. Article 33 reads:

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties, and to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of such substances.

It therefore covers a lot of ground. The authors are in the process of developing a Commentary on article 33 of the CRC to be published by Brill/Martinus Nijhoff as part of their series of commentaries on each article of the CRC later in 2011. The present article focuses on drug use specifically and the place of children within the drug control treaties.

ABSTRACT

Drug use among children has two systems of international law that may be brought to bear to ensure that States take measures to protect children from drug related harms. Neither, however, appears to have been adequately applied to the issue. This commentary raises a number of questions related specifically to the UN drug conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Broadly – how ‘up to date’ are the UN drug control conventions in the 21st century, and in the light of drug use among children? How does the CRC (coming from the different tradition of international human rights conventions) fit in? What does the CRC add, including via its various other interconnected provisions? Finally, what is the relationship between these two branches of international law?

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