New volume of Human Rights and Drugs

The International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy is pleased to welcome you to the second volume of Human Rights and Drugs, the official journal of the Centre. Established in 2009, the Centre is dedicated to developing and promoting innovative and high quality legal and human rights research and teaching on issues related to drug laws, policy and enforcement.

There have been a number of exciting developments at the Centre since the first issue of the journal was released last year. The first is a change in the name of the journal itself to Human Rights and Drugs,1 and an expansion of the publication schedule to two volumes annually. We will be publishing a second edition of the journal in the autumn of 2012, and are accepting submissions now.

The second development is the agreement of an academic partnership between the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy and the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Established in 1983, Essex is one of the oldest and most internationally- renowned academic human rights centres in the world. The International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy will now be formally housed at Essex, which creates a tremendous opportunity to expand the visibility of drug policy issues within human rights law community, as well as to engage undergraduate and postgraduate students through lectures and seminars. Although moving to Essex, we maintain a strong relationship with our original home at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, and will continue to be an active contributor to academic life at that institution.

The timing of this new partnership with Essex could not be better, and clearly reflects the growing interest in engaging issues of drugs and drug policy through the lens of international human rights law. This edition of Human Rights and Drugs is a product of that growing interest, and we are pleased to present new research and analysis in a broad range of topic areas. Indeed, the content of this second issue of the journal could not be more timely and relevant, particularly as the contributions reflect on – and offer thoughtful contrasts to – the recent work of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the treaty body established by the UN drug conventions to oversee their implementation. For example, the Board has recently refused to take a position on either the death penalty for drug offences or drug detention centres, putting it at odds with the clear positions on these issues expressed by UN human rights bodies, as explored in two articles in this journal.

Other issues included in the journal are: compulsory detention of people who use (or are suspected of using) drugs for the purpose of ‘drug treatment’; human rights implications of capital punishment for drug offences in China; safe injection facilities and the Canadian courts; the International Narcotic Control Board’s attempts to extend the scope of its powers to regulate plant materials containing psychoactive substances; the evolving interpretation of drug use in Article 33 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and finally, the limits of freedom of speech when it is prejudicial against people who use drugs.

Rick Lines and Damon Barrett
Editors-in-Chief

Download full journal with cover or access individually the articles and case summaries

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.

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.

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

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