- Government Representatives,
- Representatives of the Regional & International Organizations,
- Members of civil society and NGOs;
- Academics;
- Distinguished participants in the Sixty-eighth Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs,
First of all, I would like to begin with thanking the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, who serve as the Secretariat of the Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs, it is at their invitation that I am here today to provide the opening remarks at this important event.
I was here in Vienna last year, participating in the sixty-seventh session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to talk about the drug situation in our region and beyond. Since then, we have seen some progress in our region, but we also continue to see many of our neighbours retain law enforcement focus on the arrest of people for minor drug offenses. We see this as a behaviour that needs to change. This is because there are increasing numbers of people who remain imprisoned across our region for minor drug-related offenses, or in some cases incarcerated for just being a person who uses drugs. This push to arrest and imprison people who have a small amount of drugs on their person, or simply for using drugs at all, is a public security response that does not help us – as a region – to disrupt the organized criminal drug business. Nor does it help from a public health perspective – – the individual being imprisoned.
In our consultations previously, and more recently, we have continued to learn and to document the challenges that our changing regional drug markets present to us. Overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal, continue to plague our many communities of people who use drugs. There remains an explicit and persistent stigmatization and marginalization of people who use drugs. In many places they are seen as societal outcasts, or worse. The dearth of effective drug treatment and harm reduction programming across the region is a continued testament to this fact; and it contributes to the disappointing political reality that the life and lives of people who use drugs are less important to us. This should not be the case.
We feel that it’s imperative for all of us to work towards policies that should support comprehensive, evidence-based approaches and provide services and interventions that improve health and well-being. We must embrace those in our communities who need help the most. Bring them back into community life through the increased availability of accessible health-centred programming that focuses on decreasing the harms caused by drug use.
Of course, we are aware of the critical and important role that law enforcement authorities play in trying to disrupt the flow of illicit drugs entering our countries. In this sense, we feel that instead of targeting people who use drugs, it would be much more impactful if these efforts were instead redirected to focus on high-level drug traffickers and bring to justice those enablers of corruption that facilitate these illicit drug markets.
The Secretariat will be present and active at the CND throughout and will participate in a number of side events during the week, to highlight our latest research and activities related to enhancing understanding of transnational drug trafficking, the effectiveness of existing policy responses, and their impacts on communities and societies around the world.
I wish all the best.
