Los pueblos Nasa de Colombia presentaron ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos una petición de medidas cautelares a su favor ante las restricciones que tienen en el país actualmente para comercializar productos que contengan hoja de coca. ¿La razón? Un fallo de 2018 de la Corte Constitucional dice que para poder venderlos fuera de sus comunidades necesitan una autorización expedida por el Invima de registro sanitario. Ante esta situación, presentaron la petición ante la CIDH alegando posibles vulneraciones a la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos y a la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas de los Pueblos Indígenas de 13 de septiembre de 2007.

The number of police killings in Rio de Janeiro reached a record high last year, officials say, amid controversial hardline measures to tackle violence. Police killed 1,810 people, an average of five per day, the highest number since official records began in 1998. Critics blame the rise on policies that include the use of heavily armed agents and helicopter-borne snipers to fight criminals in densely populated areas. But officials say the approach has worked, citing a drop in violent crime. Rio de Janeiro is one of Brazil's most violent states and vast areas are under the control of criminals, many of them linked to powerful drug-trafficking gangs. But paramilitary groups formed by active and retired policemen, known as milícias, have also expanded their influence in recent years.

The president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte is carrying out a “large-scale murdering enterprise” and should be investigated by the UN for crimes against humanity, according to a new Amnesty report into his so-called war on drugs. It has been three years since Duterte pledged to wipe out drug abuse in the Philippines by giving police unprecedented powers and near total impunity to kill any suspected drug addicts or dealers. Amnesty’s report detailed how the systematic killing of the urban poor has continued on such a scale it now amounts to crimes against humanity. The report told of nightly incidents where police would shoot defenceless suspects, or abduct them and take them to other locations where they would be shot. (See also: A 3-year-old child Is the Philippine drug war’s latest victim)

Singapore executed a man accused of coordinating a cannabis delivery, despite pleas for clemency from his family and protests from activists. The United Nations Human Rights Office had asked Singapore to "urgently reconsider" his scheduled execution over one kilogram of cannabis. Activist Kirsten Han from the Transformative Justice Collective confirmed that the execution had been carried out, and that his family had been given the death certificate. Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was convicted in 2017 of "abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic" 1,017.9 grams of cannabis, twice the minimum volume that merits the death sentence. He was sentenced to death in 2018 and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision. (See also: Singapore hangs 2nd citizen for cannabis trafficking this year amid protests over death penalty)

For Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror go hand-in-hand. And the Easter attacks that rocked the capital city of Colombo on April 21 have boosted Sirisena’s anti-drug rhetoric, as he launches a drug war inspired by the bloody extrajudicial executions coordinated by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte—which Sirisena considers to be “example to the whole world.” Sirisena claimed that the suspected terrorist organization responsible for the bombings, a little-known local group called National Thowheed Jamath, could have ties to drug trafficking—as is often speculated of other Islamist militant groups, like Islamic State (IS), to which the Sri Lankan group is allegedly linked.

Recent comments by a U.S. State Department official to a United Nations (UN) drug commission are being seen by some legal experts as “a good sign” for marijuana’s potential domestic move to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), at least in terms of clearing the country’s obligations under international law. Patt Prugh, a senior legal advisor and the primary counsel for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) that the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and other global drug conventions take a “highly respectful” stance toward member states’ domestic policies that don’t have an “international dimension” and ought to be weighed against their duties to protect human rights.

Between 12 - 16 April 2021, the 64th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) took place in Vienna. Here you can find the statement by the Institute for Policy Studies / Transnational Institute on Inter-agency cooperation and coordination of efforts in addressing and countering the world drug problem (Agenda Item 7) about the UN System Common Position on drug policy and the establishment of the inter-agency Task Team, which provides ‘authoritative guidance’ to all UN agencies to develop and promote a truly evidence- and human rights-based drugs policy.

At the end of 2019 the government of Iván Duque presented a draft decree to resume the spraying of drug crops used for illicit purposes. It argued that spraying is the only instrument to curb the increase in coca crops. On February 10 and 11, 2020, a Dialogue on Aerial Spraying and Human Rights took place in Bogotá. At the event, several non-governmental organizations and representatives of different communities nationwide gathered to discuss the government’s decision to counter the illicit drug trade by resuming aerial sprays with glyphosate. The destruction of entire crops, contamination of water sources, miscarriages, malformations in newborns were, among others, some of the effects of glyphosate use that led the National Narcotics Council (CNE) to suspend aerial spraying in 2015.

There may come a day when Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is brought before the International Criminal Court to answer questions about his “war on drugs.” We might have moved one step closer to that end after UN human rights experts this month called on the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into Duterte’s signature policy. But amid the focus on the headlines of drug wars – not just in the Philippines but in Asia more broadly – it is also worth asking broader questions about their effectiveness.  In a report published in February, “10 years of drug policy in Asia: How far have we come?”, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) basically concluded that there was not a whole lot to show for these policies.

In April 2016, representatives of the world’s nations will gather to evaluate drug policy in a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS). While prohibitionist policies are still the norm, a rising tide of voices are demanding evidence based responses that respect human rights, promote public health, and reduce crime. Voices for reform reached the UN General Assembly in 2012 when the presidents of Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala, fatigued by the drug war, requested that the UN hold a session to evaluate the impact of international drug policies.

In 2018, Malta became one of the first European countries to fully decriminalise cannabis for medicinal purposes; followed up by a broader reform to (within limits) decriminalise the drug for recreational purposes, too. For people brought up in a very different Malta – where drug-users were routinely criminalised – the contrast is rather striking. Yet it also forms part of what appears to be an international movement: away from ‘prohibitionism’, and towards a ‘harm-reduction’ approach. Decriminalisation itself is not even all that ‘new’, really:  if you look at individual countries, and how their drug legislation has evolved over the decades, you will find that the process has actually been ongoing for around 20 or 30 years.

O Brasil não está em guerra, certo? Errado. Muito errado. Uma guerra invisível para a maior parte da sociedade, ignorada pela maioria do povo brasileiro, está em curso. Uma guerra que custou, em um único ano, e apenas para os estados do Rio de Janeiro e de São Paulo, R$ 5,2 bilhões. Esse foi o valor drenado do orçamento dos dois estados para matar, processar e encarcerar sobretudo jovens negros e moradores das favelas e periferias envolvidos no varejo de drogas ilícitas. Em qualquer guerra, como sabemos, há sempre os chamados “danos colaterais”; neste caso, são as vítimas das balas perdidas, que nunca erram o alvo. Atingem sempre moradores de favelas e periferias. (Veja mais: Drogas: quanto custa proibir)

In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expressing the shared drug policy principles of all UN organisations and committing them to speak with one voice. The CEB is the highest-level coordination forum of the UN system, convening biannual meetings of the heads of all UN agencies, programmes and related institutions, chaired by the UN Secretary General. 

Download the briefing (PDF)

On September 24, President Trump will begin his appearance at the UN General Assembly by hosting an event on the “World Drug Problem.” Only delegates of those UN Member States that have signed a document circulated by the Trump administration – a “Global Call to Action on the World Drug Problem” – will be invited to attend. At the event, delegates will have the opportunity to pose for a group photograph with President Trump before he, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and UN Secretary General António Guterres provide remarks.

The punitive, prohibitionist war on drugs helped prolong Colombia’s disastrous civil war, the country’s truth commission has found, in a landmark report published as part of an effort to heal the raw wounds left by conflict. The report, titled “There is a future if there is truth”, was the first instalment of a study put together by the commission that was formed as part of a historic 2016 peace deal with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). The report found that a “substantial change in drug policy” should be implemented and that a transition “to the regulation of drug markets” should follow, while also placing some of the blame at the US, who funded Colombia’s armed forces during the war.

In its report for 2022, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the “independent, quasi-judicial expert body” that monitors the implementation of the UN drug control conventions, focuses on the legalisation of cannabis. Each year, in the first chapter of its annual report, the Board addresses a specific issue it deems important for drug policy discussions and the functioning of the international drug control system. This year, cannabis legalisation is the focus, because as many have noticed, a decade after the first state legally regulated adult recreational cannabis “a growing number of States have adopted policies that permit the use of cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes”.