54th Session on the Commission on Narcotic Drugs – the civil society experience
Article Type: Conference report From: Drugs and Alcohol Today, Volume 11, Issue 2
Ann FordhamInternational Drug Policy Consortium, London, UK.
[…] in order to be more effective, we need to build new partnerships in confronting the global drug problem. Governments and civil society must work together (Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Opening speech at the 54th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 21 March 2011).
In late March of this year, the United Nations (UN) body that governs matters relating to international drug control met in Vienna at its annual meeting– the 54th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). The session is a week-long affair that brings together representatives of the 53 member states who form the CND to report on progress made within their own borders on the issue of drug control and to debate and negotiate resolutions that aim to shape international drug control practices and policies.
In addition to the government representatives who attend the CND meeting in their masses, over the years, increasing numbers of civil society groups have started making their presence felt in the margins of the meeting. The policy positions of the NGO representatives who attend the CND are diverse –there are those who are committed to pushing for a “drug-free world”(a slogan that was adopted by the UN in 1998 but has been quietly forgotten after the target was missed in 2009) and there are others who use the opportunity to draw attention to the failings of the current system and to call for reform.
The CND meeting is not traditionally a welcoming place for civil society. Within the UN, drug control has been viewed as a matter of concern for governments and the role of NGOs has very much been sidelined. It was therefore interesting this year to follow the resolution on “Improving the participatory role of civil society in addressing the world drug problem”. This resolution was probably the most contentious of the 54th Session despite the fact that the Political Declaration adopted by the CND in 2009 also emphasised the important contribution of civil society to tackling the world drug problem. In the Committee of the Whole (the forum where the texts of resolutions are debated, contested and revised in painstaking detail), and during informal negotiation meetings that took place in its margins, the civil society resolution was dissected and disputed, undergoing major revisions as a result. The notion that NGOs have an “important participatory role”in the drugs issue seems to be an anathema to a few member states – in particular China and Russia. After several lengthy debates, including an extended session that continued long after the interpreters had gone home during which the Chinese delegates wondered out loud whether such a resolution was even necessary, a rather watered-down version of the original text was adopted. It was clear that several member states that had supported the resolution were disappointed with the final text (Uruguay in particular, which threatened to remove its support to the resolution if it became too remote from the original text) but civil society representatives welcomed the resolution as a useful advocacy tool for negotiating a more prominent role within drug policy formulation.
Other resolutions worthy of note at the meeting include a resolution from El Salvador on “Achieving zero new infections of HIV among injecting drug users and other at-risk populations” which was also debated at length before a revised text was adopted. The UK sought to protect the integrity of the resolution by keeping it focused on the imperative to reduce HIV infections among people who inject drugs through the scaling-up of HIV-prevention services,while Russia and China argued that it was also important to include reference to demand reduction measures. They insisted that reducing the demand for drugs is key to halting the spread of HIV. The discussion on this resolution neatly reveals the inherent tension at the CND between public health imperatives and more ideologically driven law-enforcement “zero-tolerance”approaches. Previous commentators have written about the “cracks in the Vienna consensus” and these cracks are at their most visible during such debates as more progressive member states argue for principles such human rights and public health to be at the core of drug control policies (indeed such principles are supposedly part of the bedrock of the UN system) while others seek to protect an international drug control regime based on tough law enforcement despite the ineffectiveness of this strategy in reducing the scale of the drug market. Russia has the highest rates of HIV infection amongst its drug using population yet will not endorse or provide life-saving measures such as needle and syringe programmes or opiate substitution therapy. Russia’s position in this negotiation reflects its unfortunate policy position that needlessly costs thousands of lives.
While government representatives wrangled endlessly to tweak wording and text, civil society groups were highly visible at numerous side events that drew attention to the many flaws of the international drug control system. These events are targeted at the member state delegates who attend the CND meeting and provide a forum for discussing key issues that civil society groups wish to highlight. This year there were side events on overdose prevention, diversion mechanisms, proportionality in sentencing and the impact of drug control on socio-economic development. The International Drug Policy Consortium was instrumental in organising and facilitating many of these events and as a global network of NGOs has worked hard to increase civil society visibility at the CND.
A global campaign led by NGOs called “Count the Costs: 50 years of the war on drugs” was launched at one of the CND side events. The campaign calls for a debate on the alternatives to international prohibition, outlining the high “costs” of the current strategy in terms of human rights,public health, security, environmental degradation and socio-economic development. The campaign hinges on the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as a critical time to review the effectiveness of policy choices premised on zero-tolerance ideology.
The 1961 Convention was also under fire at another event that focused on recent political manoeuvrings around a request from the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, to remove from the convention an explicit reference that bans the chewing of the coca leaf. The request had been opposed earlier this year by a number of governments including the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, the Russian Federation, Japan, Malaysia and Mexico. While these countries have expressed support for indigenous peoples’ rights and the sovereign right of the Bolivian Government to allow coca leaf chewing within its own borders, they fiercely oppose any (no matter how minor) changes to the convention. It is as though allowing one, albeit small, amendment to the treaties could potentially undermine the whole drug control system. It is worrying that the international drug control framework is seen to be so weak and brittle that it cannot be even slightly adjusted and modernised without being at risk of somehow falling apart. Bolivia has not backed off from the issue and in fact made it very clear at a governmental side event, that they intend to pursue the matter through all avenues open to them. This includes the possibility of withdrawing from the treaty and re-acceding with a reservation.
The issue of the 1961 Convention was also clearly very much on the mind of the new Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC), Yury Fedotov. This was Mr Fedotov’s first CND meeting and in his opening remarks he urged “the international community to rejuvenate the convention” although he did not agree that it is out of date. Mr Fedotov emphasised the need for a comprehensive approach to the drug problem and to reinforce commitments to health and human rights. Mr Fedotov is clearly an effective communicator and an experienced diplomat. He also met with NGO representatives during an informal dialogue and despite some tense moments(including a response directing drug user representatives to engage with their governments rather than at the international level, which unfortunately neglects the high level of stigma and discrimination drug users face), he was cordial and reiterated his willingness to continue dialogues with civil society in a marked contrast to his predecessor, Antonio Maria Costa, who was usually openly hostile in such meetings. His closing remarks in the final plenary also welcomed both the useful discussions that had taken place in the side events and closer collaboration with NGOs.
The CND meeting is indeed a surreal event and meaningful civil society participation remains elusive and is still something to be fought for. Despite previous declarations and recent supportive comments from the head of UNODC,attending the meeting as a civil society representative still leaves one with a sense of being on the outside looking in. The Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (the body that represents NGOs with the UN bodies in Vienna) has made successful strides in the last few years, organising informal dialogues with Mr Fedotov,the Chair of the International Narcotics Control Board and with the Chair of the CND meeting itself. However, in terms of the formal programme, NGOs still play minor walk on parts. There is no doubt that we will continue to push for greater involvement, drawing on the good examples set out by other UN agencies, such as UNAIDS, who have formal consultation mechanisms for civil society, to argue our case and take a rightful place at the drug policy table.
