Drugs and Human Rights at the United Nations
Human rights and drugs at the UN have been described as ’parallel universes’. Despite the documented negative human rights impacts of the current approach to drug policies, human rights have received little attention in UN drug control system. The international drug control conventions, which form the legal basis for current international drug policies, were developed and have been interpreted in a vacuum from international human rights law, and the principal organs of drug control have carried out their mandates with little reference to human rights norms, and little regard for their own human rights obligations. Meanwhile, the human rights machinery within the UN has traditionally paid scant attention to drug policies. The result is an international legal and political environment within which human rights violations connected to drug policies are less likely to be raised and addressed, and within which human rights progress through international drug policy is not pursued.
IHRA’s human rights team works with civil society partners to address this situation through international advocacy at political fora such as the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the UN Human Rights Council, with agencies such as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and with independent human rights mechanisms.
In recent years IHRA has influenced a greater focus on drug policies by UN human rights mechanisms and has contributed to improved human rights discourse within the UN drug control system. In 2008, IHRA was closely involved, as a civil society member of the UK delegation, in arguing through the first ever human rights resolution adopted at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. In 2009, IHRA worked with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture on his report to the Human Rights Council calling for a human rights-based approach to drug policies.
Read more…
Ten Reasons Why the Human Rights Council Must Address Drug Policy (with Human Rights Watch and Open Society Institute) (PDF, 321 KB)
The United Nations and Drug Policy: Towards a Human Rights-Based Approach, 2009 (with Manfred Nowak) (PDF, 148 KB)
Building Consensus: A Reference Guide to Human Rights and Drug Policy (with Human Rights Watch) (PDF, 207 KB)