Say NO to death for drugs

In this commentary, published in The Hindu, Rick Lines and Anand Grover, present a long list of international and domestic jurisprudence that defy the justifications for handing down death penalties for drug offenders in India.

They argue that, although most experts agree that drug offences do not warrant death penalties, countries like India impose it regardless of whether offenders were “young or old, sick or mentally infirm, socially and economically disadvantaged or acting under duress or pressure”.

Instead, capital punishment is decided on the basis of the quantity of drugs found. Sentencing guidelines based on quantity/purity calculations have been criticised by academic and legal commentators as unreliable and arbitrary.

Read more about the death penalty for drug offences in “The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: A Violation of International Human Rights Law”, by Rick Lines, co-founder of the International Centre for Human Rights and Drug Policy and Executive Director of Harm Reduction International.

Afghan Children Ensnared in Heroin Trade With Iran

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) published this week an exclusive investigation on the use of Afghan children as drug mules, who take high risks to smuggle heroin into Iran.

The story highlights the risks not only from swalling pellets with heroin, which can burst during the way, but also how children are vulnerable to smugglers who use them to bypass the draconian drug trafficking penalties in Iran.

“Some children are killed, while others have been thrown in prison. In fact, children are attractive to the smugglers because they are not executed in Iran, where drug trafficking is a serious offence that carries capital punishment.”

Most children earn very little in comparison to the high profits made by smugglers. They often don’t know the risks involved or as the report explains, some parents will rent their kids for smuggling.

This highlights the complex situation in Afghanistan, where families depend on the opium trade due to the lack of viable alternative development funding. As one of the children interviewed said “the smugglers exploit our poverty and obligations.” The International Labor Office (ILO) and UNICEF define the use of children for drug smuggling as child trafficking and one of the worst forms of child labour.

The tough choices made by families is also evident in the case of farming families who are coerced into giving away their children to repay a debt to local drug lords. For more on this issue read ‘In the Shadows of the Insurgency in Afghanistan: Child Bartering, Opium Debt, and the War on Drugs’ by Atal Ahmadzai and Christopher Kuonqui, published in Children of the Drug War.

Additional information on child drug mules:

‘The use of children in the production, sales and trafficking of drugs: a synthesis of participatory action-oriented research programs in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand’, by Emma Porio and Christine S. Crisol, published by the International Labor Office (2004). Click here for the report.

Stop the Traffik: End Child Exploitation, UNICEF UK (2003). Read this report on the changing face of human trafficking and children smuggling drugs into the United Kingdom.

Poverty Provides Growing Number of ‘Drug Mules’, by Angel Paez, published by Inter Press Service(2008). Read the story.

Children in Mexico: Criminals or Victims?

Children in Mexico’s ‘Drug War’: Criminals or Victims?

Mexico’s drug war has taken its toll on children. More than 30,000 of them have been involved in organized crime, according to the Children’s Rights Network (REDIM).

These children are paid by drug gangs to do minor roles such as drug running or being lookouts, but some have been trained to kill. This was the case of 14-year-old Edgar Jimenez, nicknamed ‘El Ponhis’ or ‘The Cloak’, arrested last year. Jimenez had been kidnapped at the age of 11 and forced into crime.

The circumstances that have lead to children’s involvement in organized crime vary, according to the story published by CNN. Social exclusion and economic marginality play a strong role. But also coercion by threats of violence against them or their families.

In this sense, the Children’s Rights Network has urged the government to recognize them as victims of child abuse. In a country where 30,000-50,000 people have died in the ‘drug war’, children have been orphaned and neglected.

There is a need to “take into account the long-term psychological damage to children associated with high levels of violence and the resultant breakdown in family, community, and social structures”, according to Aram Barra and Daniel Joloy’s article in Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People. If the government does not take responsibility for upholding their rights, the long term consequences will not only be felt by these children and their families, but on whole communities.

As Barra and Joloy conclude, “drugs should be addressed as a public health and development issue, rather than a security issue, and only if children are truly placed at the forefront of more effective drug policies rather than being left to drift in a sea of violence.”

Opium brides

PBS Frontline broadcasted on January 3 a thought provoking reportage on Afghanistan’s opium brides. Reporter Najibullah Quraishi journeyed into the Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farm families have been forced to make with drug smugglers in order to survive.

Watch this story and related stories in Frontline’s website.

For more information on the opium brides, read also “In the Shadows of the Insurgency in Afghanistan: Child Bartering, Opium Debt, and the War on Drugs by Atal Ahmadzai and Christopher Kuonqui, published in Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Policies on Young People.

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

Mexico, war crimes and a slippery slope

The war on drugs in Mexico has left thousands of people dead and a country in peril. But how can international law address this situation?

In an article published by Open Democracy, Patrick Gallahue comments on the recent petition made by Mexican human rights activists to the International Criminal Court to prosecute the Mexican government for crimes against humanity. What are the possible consequences of considering the drug war an armed conflict? Gallahue makes a convincing argument that in order to arrive to peace, we need not necessarily call the situation in Mexico a war.

To read the full article, click here

Count the Costs: Increasing harms to the environment

The ‘War on Drugs’ has not only affected people but also the environment. Current drug policies have not reduced the environmental harm caused by illicit drug production but actually increased them according to the latest briefing by ‘Count the Costs’, a project launched earlier this year by a range of organisations, including the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

Deforestation and pollution are just some of the devastating effects of the current drug control policies. Chemicals used to wipe out illicit crops in Colombia have affected its rich flora and fauna. The so called ‘balloon effect’, the phenomenon by which law enforcement displaces production in one region causing it to expand in another one as drug producers mobilise to meet demand) has also led to significant deforestation in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Myanmar, Thailand and the United States.

As a result of the balloon effect, there has been “widespread deforestation, jeopardising the 200 species of oak tree and the habitats of numerous endemic bird species” in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountain range. In Peru, 10% of the total rainforest destruction over the past century is due to the illicit drug trade.

Although authorities argue the need to continue such policies precisely to avoid the environmental harm done by illicit production of drugs, the briefing highlights that “they have simply transferred these harms to more remote, ecologically sensitive areas such as the Amazon forests – an unavoidable consequence of the balloon effect.” The benefits are elusive as production is only displaced but not eliminated.

The consequences on development should also be considered as it is the most vulnerable and poor who are caught in the middle of supply reduction strategies. As criminals target areas with ‘little economic infrastructure or governance and suffer from high levels of poverty’, many farmers have few alternative means of earning a living outside of the drug trade. At the same time, law enforcement’s methods to eradicate crops, such as aerial spraying with chemical herbicides, destroys not only illicit but also licit crops, such as food crops. Water deposits in natural parks have also been contaminated due to the proximity of illicit crops to natural protected areas.

Other environmental harms include the massive consumption of electricity for the production of hydroponic cannabis and its corresponding CO2 footprint, or toxic waste dumping in the production of methamphetamines.

As a result, ‘Count the Costs’ recommends national authorities and international funders to take due consideration of environmental concerns at all levels. Thorough scrutiny of the impact of drug control policies on the environment is long overdue. This includes not only a more careful scrutiny as mentioned above, but also to explore “a range of alternative systems, including decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs, and models of legal regulation”.

Read the full version of the briefing here.

Join Count the Costs campaign on twitter and facebook.

Mexico neglects people displaced by drug violence says IDMC report

Despite the mass displacement in Mexico due to the drug related violence, the government does not have the necessary legal and institutional framework to address the needs of IDPs nor has it requested assistance from international organizations, according to a report published last week by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Council of Refugees.

The report by the independent Oslo-based research body highlighted that more systematic research is needed to assess the full scale of displacement in Mexico. However, large-scale and gradual displacements have been identified through media reports, human rights organizations as well as a study by the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (UACJ). The states most affected have been Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, and to lesser extent Michoacán, Durango and Sinaloa.

Large-scale displacements have been recorded in Tamaulipas, Michoacán and Guerrero, according to the IDMC. The largest one registered so far was in Michoacán, where 2,000 people were forced to flee in 2010. Gradual displacement has been mostly registered in Ciudad Juárez. In the last three years, about 220,000 people have left this Northern city due to the sustained violence. Half of them have been identified as internal IDPs. One private consultancy report estimated 1.6 million people have been displaced by the drug violence, but the methodology used to arrive to this figure is uncertain.

Since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, about 50,000 soldiers have been deployed throughout the country. The mass displacement of citizens has occurred within the context of the battles between drug cartels and the military. Some of the effects of the drug-related violence and the militarisation of public security listed on the report have been widespread threats and attacks to journalists; violence against ‘transmigrants’ en-route to the United States; and increasing complaints against the armed forces for human rights violations.

People forced to flee their homes have lost their property, livelihoods and their identification documents. In one mass displacement case in Guerrero, 79 people lost their personal document and were not able to access social benefits. Their security is precarious, as the report notes:

“For example, those fleeing from Valle de Juárez around Ciudad Juárez have fled to the south-eastern part of Juárez, where armed violence is also intense. Small business owners fleeing to Veracruz have also been attacked by cartels there (Fundación Mepi, 2011)”.

Despite this, the government has no mechanisms in place to ensure the physical or legal protection of their property, nor does it address the basic needs of IDPs in order to prevent them from falling into poverty. The report stresses that “while the government’s military strategy to combat the cartels has led the violence to increase, it has had no plan to address the results of its intervention, including the resulting displacement”.

Last October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs expressed its concern about the displacement situation in Mexico and offered to assist the government. However, there has been no formal effort or pledge to remedy the situation of the victims of the drug war violence.

Finally, the report is grounded on the view that Mexico is facing an internal conflict. For more discussion on this subject, read Patrick Gallahue’s article “Mexico’s ‘War on Drugs’: Real or Rhetorical Armed Conflict?”, published in the Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict. Just click here.

To read the full report, click here.

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

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