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International Travelling Fellowship Awards
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The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) are pleased to sponsor the ‘International Travelling Fellowship Awards’. These awards are designed to support researchers and scientists from developing countries for a one week research visit with a NIDA grantee and participation in the 2008 NIDA International Forum and the 2008 CPDD Annual Scientific Meeting.
Applicants must be “drug abuse investigators” from developing countries who have completed their doctoral degree or residency no more than 10 years ago. Eligible countries for this programme are those in Africa, those in Asia (except Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), those in Central and Eastern Europe (except European Union members), Russia and the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, those in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific Ocean Islands (except Australia and New Zealand). In addition, applicants must live and work outside the United States at the time of the application and the travel.
The deadline for applications is January 15th 2008, and the results will be announced in March 2008. Please download the PDF below for further information.
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IHRA Launch Death Penalty Report
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On 10th December 2007 – to coincide with International Human Rights Day – IHRA released a major report calling for an end to the use of the death penalty for drug offences around the world. The report concludes that the on-going execution of drug offenders is a violation of international human rights law.
The report is entitled ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: A Violation of International Human Rights Law’ and was written by Rick Lines. It is the first major report from the HR2 Project– IHRA’s new harm reduction and human rights monitoring and policy analysis programme. The report emphasises how the harms faced by people who use drugs do not only include health harms such as HIV and hepatitis C infections, but also the effects of repressive law enforcement activities. While the number of countries practicing capital punishment has steadily decreased over the past twenty years, this report demonstrates that the number of countries using the death penalty for drug offences has steadily increased.
Across the world, 133 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. However, of the 64 countries that have retained capital punishment, half of which apply these punishments to drug-related offences (whether they be drug possession or drug trafficking offences). In one of the most shocking examples, the Chinese Government celebrates the United Nation’s ‘International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking’ each year by publicly executing people for drug-related crimes.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) - one of the main UN human rights treaties – states that the death penalty may only be applied to the “most serious crimes”. Both the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions have stated that drug offences do not constitute “most serious crimes” - making executions for such offences a violation of international human rights law.
Commenting on the report launch, Professor Gerry Stimson (IHRA’s Executive Director) said, “Capital punishment for drug offences is but one illustration of how human rights have been sacrificed in the name of the ‘war on drugs’. Unfortunately, the death penalty is not the only example of such abuses worldwide. Repressive law enforcement practices, the denial of health services to drug users and the spread of HIV infection among people who inject drugs, due to lack of access to harm reduction programmes, are far too common in many countries across the globe.”
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 Click here to view the report [PDF:598KB]
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IHRA/SDUU Report on Sweden’s Human Rights Obligations - An Update
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In November 2007, Damon Barrett from IHRA and Berne Stalenkrantz from the Swedish Drug Users Union (SDUU) made statements to the UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural rights at a meeting in Geneva. The statements were made at a Pre-Sessional Working Group of the Committee which hears the concerns of NGOs ahead of the Committee’s meetings with national government delegations to discuss their compliance with the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. A delegation from the Sweden Government will be meeting with the Committee in Spring 2008 for this purpose.
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Click here to view the statements read by Damon Barrett (IHRA) and Berne Stalenkrantz (SDUU) [PDF:22KB]
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The statements from IHRA and SDUU follow on from a joint report to the Committee regarding injecting drug use and harm reduction in Sweden, submitted earlier in the month. They were very well received and Mr. Mohamed Ezzeldin Abdel-Moneim of Egypt (the committee member assigned as the country rapporteur for Sweden) was particularly interested to hear that:
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- The Committee had previously recommended harm reduction as a HIV prevention measure in Tajikistan in 2006;
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- Sweden had not raised injecting drug use and related harms as a human right issue in this or its previous reports to the Committee; and
- The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Paul Hunt, had categorically stated that Sweden had an obligation to implement comprehensive harm reduction programmes across the country as a matter or priority.
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The Pre-Sessional Working Group meetings are intended to assist the Committee in gaining a complete picture of the state of economic, social and cultural rights in a country. As a result of these statements, it is hoped that the Committee will now ask for further information from the Swedish Government and that a full discussion of the right to health for drug users in Sweden can take place next year. Mr Abdel-Moneim said that the Committee would look into the issues raised by IHRA and SDUU.
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Click here to view the IHRA and SDUU Joint Report [PDF:66KB]
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IHRA Conference Update
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Preparations are now well underway for Harm Reduction 2008: IHRA’s 19th International Conference (Barcelona; 11th – 15th May) - the latest in a series of annual harm reduction conferences which have been held around the world since 1990. The website – www.ihraconferences.net - is regularly updated in both English and Spanish. This is the best place to look for all conference information including delegate fees, accommodation, the programme and the film festival. The website also houses a developing archive resource from the previous 18 IHRA conferences.
Abstract submissions for the conference closed on the 15th November (after a 24 hour extension due to demand), and we have received in excess of 1,200 submissions (a record high for the IHRA conferences). These have now been peer-reviewed by an International Programme Advisory Group, and the Executive Programme Committee will be meeting in December 2007 to finalise the programme. There will be sessions organised by many international organisations – including the World Health Organization WHO, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, International Harm Reduction Development (IHRD) programme, International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) and the International Center for Alcohol Policies
As always, there is also a range of satellite events planned for Sunday 11th May to accompany the conference. These will cover a range of topics, including nursing, alcohol, prisons, drug user activism and substitution treatment. More information will be made available on www.ihraconferences.net soon. There are also plans for a Harm Reduction Training Academy to formalise the educational value and training element of the IHRA conferences. To express your interest in this proposal (either as a delegate, tutor or supporter), please contact Jamie Bridge– IHRA’s Communications and Project Development Officer – before the end of December 2007.
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Click here for more information about the Harm Reduction Training Academy
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The conference is the main meeting point for all those interested in harm reduction, and is an invaluable platform for debate, discussion, and the dissemination of new research, evolving ideas and best practice, so demand is likely to be very high for the event and for hotel accommodation in Barcelona. A comprehensive and discounted accommodation list will be available on the website soon (courtesy of Anderson Travel) and will be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis. There are also “early bird” delegate fee discounts available for people who register before January 21st 2008.
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See you in Barcelona!
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INPUD Demand Answers from the European Commission
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For the last two years, members of the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) have lobbied the European Commission (EC) for a greater level of civil society involvement in discussions and decisions about European drugs policies. As a result of this lobbying and pressure from other civil society groups, the EC have announced their first ‘European Civil Society Forum on Drugs’, which is scheduled to take place on 13 and 14 December 2007. However, the EC have rejected INPUD's application to attend the Forum, and have not included any other drug user organisations or representatives.
In response, two INPUD Activists - Milena Naydenova and Stijn Goossens – have written a letter to the EC asking for an official explanation for this decision. The letter emphasises the errors of excluding people who use drugs – described as the stakeholders “most directly concerned by the drugs problems”.
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Click here to view the INPUD letter to the EC [PDF:23KB]
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In 2006, the EC released their ‘Green Paper on the role of Civil Society in Drugs Policy in the European Union’ and organised an open consultation on this document. A group of 23 European drug users and organisations worked together to respond to this consultation, which resulted in the EC issuing a call in April 2007 for organisations to apply to attend the ‘European Civil Society Forum on Drugs’. INPUD were one of the 75 organisations that applied, but were omitted from the list of accepted applicants which the EC released recently. The list does, however, contain IHRA and various other harm reduction organisations such as the Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network (now known as EHRN – the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network), and the Romanian Harm Reduction Network.
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Click here to see the list of Forum participants [PDF:424KB]
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International Network of Drug Consumption Rooms Founded in Bilbao
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 In October 2007, at the ‘1st International Scientific Meeting on Drug Consumption Rooms’ in Bilbao, representatives from the eight countries where drug consumption rooms (DCRs) exist met and established the ‘International Network of Drug Consumption Rooms’ (INDCR).
The meeting was organised by Médicos del Mundo (Spain) in collaboration with Bizia and THS8, and was attended by DCR personnel from Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Australia and Canada. It was also attended by other professionals working in harm reduction programmes in the UK, France and Portugal. The meeting ended up with the participants signing a ‘Declaration of Intent’ which paved the way for the establishment of the international network.
The INDCR aims to facilitate communication between existing services and allow for the exchange of the best practices and scientific knowledge that have already been generated. It also seeks to improve the data collection that surrounds DCR services and enable the design of multi-centre studies to increase the evidence base for these interventions. The network will also support and advise the creation of new DCR services around the world.
Initially, the INDCR will consist of 4 expert groups focusing on data collection, research, legal and political issues. These groups consist of key contacts from each country with established DCR facilities – with Médicos del Mundo (Spain) as the leading organisation.
Please contact Javier Rio for further information.
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Cambodia to Open First Methadone Clinic
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The Cambodian Government has announced plans to set up the country's first methadone clinic to support people who use opiate drugs. Sann Sary – Director of the Cambodian Ministry of Health Hospital Department, has said that the ground-breaking project will launch in 2008 from the Phnom Penh Hospital.
It is estimated that the service will cost around $US 100,000 in training and infrastructure costs to start up, and it is being sponsored by the Government with the assistance of technical support from the World Health Organization (WHO). The announcement has been made in response to a recent rapid increase in the numbers of injecting drug users in Cambodia, which demonstrated "a clearly identified need" for the treatment according to Graham Shaw (the WHO Technical Officer in Cambodia).
Although the service will initially be run from just one centre in Phnom Penh, this decision by the Cambodian Government represents another positive step towards the global acceptance of evidence-based harm reduction interventions. Many of Cambodia’s neighbouring countries have already established methadone programmes (such as China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam). As Graham Shaw noted, "This is only a start but it is a crucial factor in the continuum of care for injecting users of opiates".
Methadone is a controlled, long-acting opiate drug which is frequently prescribed to people who use street opiates (such as heroin) in order to help them avoid withdrawal symptoms, overcome their addiction and achieve stability. According to UNAIDS, methadone is currently provided to drug users in 53 countries around the world. It is a scientifically supported intervention to help reduce a number of drug-related harms, including the transmission of blood-borne viruses including HIV and hepatitis.
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 Click here to view IHRA’s ’50 Best Collection on HIV Prevention and Care for Injecting Drug Use’
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CEEHRN was founded in 1997 by a group of harm reduction pioneers and has worked for the last decade across Central and Eastern Europe and in the countries of Central Asia (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). As such, the new name is simply a reflection of the geographic scope of the network – and their mission, goals, membership and structure will all remain unchanged. Importantly, however, the email addresses for the network staff will now have the suffix ‘…@harm-reduction.org’ (although the old addresses will still be used as well for a transitional period).
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Click here to view the official EHRN Alert (in English) [PDF:41KB]
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Click here to view the official EHRN Alert (in Russian) [PDF:192KB]
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December 2007 Article of the Month
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Forsyth AJM (2007) Banning Glassware from Nightclubs in Glasgow (Scotland): Observed Impacts, Compliance and Patron’s Views. Alcohol and Alcoholism Advance Access (published on October 11th 2007), doi:10.1093/alcalc/agm142.
This study sets out to evaluate the impact of new legislation in Scotland banning bars and clubs in Glasgow City Centre from serving alcoholic beverages in standard glass containers. Instead, drinks must be served in plastic, aluminium or ‘safety’ glass in all premises serving alcohol after midnight. This legal measure was put in place as a response to the city’s “unenviable level of ‘glassings’” (violent incidences in which a drinks glass or glass bottle is used as a weapon). In 2005, there were 81 of these incidents reports in Glasgow, with the total number likely to be a lot higher (as many incidents remain unreported to the police or Accident and Emergency departments).
This study used 100 hours of participant observation in eight Glasgow City Centre late night entertainment venues, supported by detailed face-to-face interviews with a small sample of patrons. The results indicated that, although violent incidents were still relatively common in these venues, they were now a lot less likely to result in serious injury as a result of the glass ban. In many ways, therefore, this intervention is a perfect example of a practical alcohol harm reduction measure – targeting and reducing a risk rather than eliminating a behaviour.
The observers had problems in ascertaining whether or not the glass ban was being complied with – exceptions were made in the law for wine and champagne and it is difficult to distinguish between standard glassware and ‘safety glass’ (designed to be more resistant to impact and less likely to shard and cause injury) for other drinks. Indeed, in the absence of a manufacturing standard for ‘safety glass’, there have even be claims that ‘safety glass’ may be no safer or perhaps even more dangerous for bar staff themselves. Nonetheless, the glass ban appeared to have been well received by patrons, who reported feeling safer, and had few negative consequences. Despite not providing comparisons of routinely-collected data on glass-related injuries before and after the glass ban, this is an excellent example of a practical, local intervention to reduce the harms faced by people who drink alcohol in the night-time economy. The authors conclude that “as is already accepted with motor vehicles and firearms, alcohol and glass should not mix”.
This paper was published on October 11th 2007 through the Alcohol and Alcoholism journal ‘Advance Access’ service It will also be featured in IHRA’s forthcoming “50 Best Documents on Alcohol Harm Reduction” – due for release in early 2008. Please visit www.ihra.net/alcohol for more information.
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