Emerging policy contradictions between the United Nations drug control system and the core values of the United Nations (original) (raw)
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Towards Global Governance: The Inadequacies of the UN Drug Control Regime
AJIL Unbound, 2020
Human rights and the UN drug control regime have long had an uneasy relationship, which is evident today in the tensions that exist between criminal justice reform advocates, the institutions of the UN drug control regime, and economic interests that stand to benefit from decriminalization and legalization efforts. The UN drug control regime's relationship with human rights cannot be properly discussed without acknowledging its colonial and racist roots. From the earliest agreement on drug control in 1909, born out of the crisis of opium dependency caused by the forced opening of China to trade in opium by the British, to the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which was a product of America's war on drugs, international efforts to regulate drugs have never been for the benefit of those who have suffered the most from both the supply of drugs and its criminalization. The war on drugs has been a global war from...
Challenging the UN drug control conventions: problems and possibilities
International Journal of Drug Policy, 2003
Increasing numbers of sovereign states are beginning to review their stance on the prohibition based UN drug control conventions. Recent years have seen nations implement, or seriously discuss, tolerant drug policies that exploit the latitude existing within the legal framework of the global drug control regime. With efforts to implement pragmatic approaches to drug use at the national level, however, comes the growing recognition that the flexibility of the conventions is not unlimited. It seems that the time is not too distant when further movement within states away from the prohibitive paradigm will only be possible through some sort of change in or defection from the regime. This article suggests that efforts to implement treaty revision are fraught with difficulties. It will be shown how the UN procedures permitting revision of the conventions allow nations supporting the current prohibition based system, particularly the United States of America, to easily block change. The article argues that such systemic obstacles may lead parties wishing to appreciably expand policy space at a national level to consider a form of treaty withdrawal. It is suggested that such action by a group of like-minded revision oriented states may be sufficient to trigger a weakening of the regime. The article contends, however, that total withdrawal would be a problematic option, not least because it would have serious consequences for the entire international treaty system.
The United Nations and Drug Policy: Towards a Human Rights Based Approach (With Prof Manfred Nowak)
In 1945, the United Nations was established to 'save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.' Today, the language of war has been adopted for policy objectives. The 'war on drugs' is now more widespread and higher in financial and human cost than ever, and has impacted negatively across borders and across human rights protections. In much the same way as the 'War on Terror,' the war on drugs has left in its wake human rights abuses, worsening national and international security and barriers to sustainable development. Although UN bodies have never officially endorsed the term, for many human rights, public health, HIV and drug policy reform advocates - and for many of those on the front lines of the war on drugs, including indigenous people, farmers, people who use drugs and service providers - the United Nations drug control system is seen as a significant part of the drug problem, rather than part of the solution. We argue that the aims of international drug policy must be revisited in line with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the binding normative framework of human rights. We argue further that the UN drug conventions are insufficient, alone, as a legal framework for the complex issue of drug policy and that human rights law must be recognised by the relevant organs of the UN as a part of that framework. The implications of this 'expanded' legal framework for the current pillars of international drug policy are then considered as are the human rights obligations of the drug control entities, and their possible future roles in the promotion and protection of human rights. Barrett, Damon and Nowak, Manfred, The United Nations and Drug Policy: Towards a Human Rights-Based Approach (August 25, 2009). THE DIVERSITY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR KALLIOPI K. KOUFA, pp. 449-477, Aristotle Constantinides and Nikos Zaikos, eds., Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, 2009
International Journal of Drug Policy, 2010
This commentary addresses some of the challenges posed by the broader normative, legal and policy framework of the United Nations for the international drug control system. The ‘purposes and principles’ of the United Nations are presented and set against the threat based rhetoric of the drug control system and the negative consequences of that system. Some of the challenges posed by human rights law and norms to the international drug control system are also described, and the need for an impact assessment of the current system alongside alternative policy options is highlighted as a necessary consequence of these analyses.
The ''international community'' presented an apparent unanimity in its endorsement of prohibitive drug control at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs in 1998. The reality is that there is a longstanding conflict within the UN system between nations wanting to maintain the prohibition regime and those hoping for a more pragmatic approach. The depth and course of this conflict can be traced through a myriad of documents and records of meetings published by the UN, revealing a previously unwritten history of events leading to the 1998 UNGASS meeting. These show the extent to which the hardliners have gone to maintain the status quo through rhetoric, denial, manipulation, selective presentation, misrepresentation and suppression of evidence, selective use of experts, threats to funding, and purging ''defeatists'' from the UN system. The UN has committed itself to a drug free world by 2008, even though the problem is worsening faster than its favoured remedy can be applied to solve it. However, some reformers and pragmatists have been challenging the system in their domestic policies. This may encourage a more realistic approach to illicit drugs and help to introduce more rational functioning to the UN system's drug control organisations.
The UN Drug Control Conventions: The Limits of Latitude
Legislative Reform of Drug Policies, 2012
ABSTRACT Faced with a complex range of drug related problems, a growing number of nations are exploring the development of nationally appropriate policies that shift away from the prohibition-oriented approach that has long dominated the field but is losing more and more legitimacy. In so doing, such countries must pay close attention to the UN based global drug control framework of which practically all nations are a part.This briefing paper outlines the international legal drug control obligations, the room for manoeuvre the regime leaves open to national policy makers and the clear limits of latitude that cannot be crossed without violating the treaties. It also covers the vast grey area lying between the latitude and limitations, including the legal ambiguities that are subject to judicial interpretation and political contestation.The paper applies the traffic light analogy to drug law reform in order to divide ongoing policy changes and emerging proposals into three categories regarding their legal tenability: red - stop or challenge the conventions; orange - proceed with caution; and green - please proceed.The present system of worldwide drug control is based upon three international conventions. These are the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.While the substance of the drug control conventions is complex, their function is simple. They provide the legal structure for an international system of drug control by defining control measures to be maintained within each state party to these conventions and by prescribing rules to be obeyed by these Parties in their relations with each other. These rules can be categorized by two principal methods of achieving drug control. These are commodity control (the definition and regulation of the licit production, supply and consumption of drugs) and penal control (the suppression through criminal law of illicit production, supply and consumption.)The conventions therefore operate with the intention of creating an appropriate balance between penal sanctions, the degree of real and/or potential harm associated with specific drugs and their therapeutic usefulness.The overarching concern for the ‘health and welfare of mankind’ expressed within the conventions’ preambles, required a dual goal: reducing the availability of drugs to prevent abuse and addiction that ‘constitutes a serious evil for the individual and is fraught with social and economic danger to mankind’, while at the same time ensuring adequate availability because their medical use is ‘indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering’.The global control system, established with that twin purpose, effectively ended the large-scale diversion of narcotic drugs like cocaine and heroin from pharmaceutical sources to illicit channels. However, it was unable to prevent the resulting rapid expansion of illicit production that began supplying the non-medical market instead.The tensions resulting from the inherent duality exacerbated as the system evolved based on the implicit principle that reducing availability for illicit purposes could only be achieved through the penal enforcement of predominantly prohibition oriented supply-side measures.The tightening of drug laws, escalation of law enforcement efforts and an actual ‘war on drugs’ against the illicit market, over time distorted the balance at the expense of the other side of the coin.Key Points: Decriminalization of possession, purchase and cultivation for personal use operates reasonably comfortably inside the confines of the UN drug control conventions; Harm reduction services, including drug consumption rooms, can operate lawfully under the drug control treaty system; There is greater scope to provide health care or social support instead of punishment for people caught up in minor offences related to personal use or socio-economic necessity; All controlled drugs can be used for medical purposes, including heroin prescription and ‘medical marijuana’; what constitutes medical use is left to the discretion of the parties; The INCB often increases tensions around interpretations instead of resolving them, though the Board should be guided ‘by a spirit of co-operation rather than by a narrow view of the letter of the law’; There are limits of latitude; a legal regulated market for non-medical use of cannabis or any other scheduled drug is not permissible within the treaty framework; Legal tensions exist with other international legal obligations such as those stemming from human rights or indigenous rights; Growing doubts and inherent inconsistencies and ambiguities provide legitimate ground for demanding more space for experimentation with alternative control models than the current systems allows.
2002
Policies towards mind-altering drugs are controversial and vary among countries and cultures. Many nations feel that the United Nations should be a forum where anti-drug issues can be discussed openly and 'objectively'. During the 1990s I participated frequently in UN sponsored research projects. This essay summarizes what has been a challenging and exciting experience and raises many questions about the UN's capacity to do and or fund 'objective' drug research. This is so because of pressures on the UN from drug-policy setting countries, lack of independent funds for the UN drug policy agencies, the structure and internal dynamics of the UN bureaucracies, and the background of the involved UN staff. As a result of these factors, the UN has promoted a repressive anti-drug agenda and does not allow open debate of many of the key anti-drug issues currently discussed in many countries. This is unfortunate because the UN has the largest amount of information about illicit drugs anywhere in the world and can play a key role in improving anti-drug policies that currently are unsatisfactory to both drug hawks and doves.