 I'd like to begin the closing by welcoming to the stage our good friend Stephen Lewis. I was very privileged to get to know Stephen about 10 years ago when myself and some other people in this room worked to support the Global Commission on HIV and the law. And Stephen was certainly one of the primary commissioners working on that process, pushing forward the progressive recommendations around harm reduction around Decrim. Stephen Lewis is the co-founder and co-director of AIDS Free World, an international advocacy organization that exposes injustice, abuse and inequality, the social ills that underpin and continues to sustain HIV. He's the co-founder and board chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation and he served on the Global Commission on HIV and the law. Stephen was appointed to the Lancet Commission on Drug Policy and Health in 2015. Stephen Lewis was the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for HIV and AIDS in Africa from 2001 until the end of 2006. Prior to that from 1995 to 1999 he was the Deputy Executive Director at UNICEF and the organization's Global Headquarters in New York. Before that from 1984 to 1988 he was Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations. He's a companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honour for lifetime achievement and holds 42 honorary doctorates from Canadian and American universities. We'll give you your 43rd honorary doctorate from the International Arm Reduction Conference if everyone's impressed with your speech at the end. We'll take a show of hands. Thank you. Please welcome Stephen Lewis. It does make me feel a little as though my life is in the past tense. Thank you for rescuing me. I want to start with a confessional. I'm a hopelessly unilingual anglophone and I have enough respect for the French language not to do it violence in your presence. So forgive me for relying entirely on English. I'm faintly apprehensive where I'm standing. A number of years ago when I was speaking at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal they turned off the lights at the end of the speech and added one fierce spotlight from the back and I walked confidently off the platform and fell six feet to a concrete floor where I managed to break my hip. It allowed Brian Mulroney the Prime Minister of Canada to say that he wasn't at all surprised Stephen Lewis had been walking into space all his adult life. I regret that I wasn't here through the conference only for the day and I'm not going to try to review or repeat the nuts and bolts of the remarkable almost encyclopedic range of various sessions which you collectively had. Rather I'd like to discuss some potential routes to progress. The context very simply for that is a quick conversation I had with Rick Lines last night when he reminded me of the commission on HIV and the law which allows me to remind him that it's not the 10th anniversary Rick it's the fifth. And yes well that's you're probably suffering as I am from a geriatric moment but the but the fifth anniversary of the commission on HIV and the law is in fact an excellent launch pad because the commission made a sturdy effort to deal with what they called people who use drugs and advanced a number of recommendations which came down very strongly in support of harm reduction in all its manifestations and equally strongly against the orgy of punitive intervention which characterized the response to drugs in so many parts of the world. So the commission on HIV and the law was a good measure at the moment but in truth we've made limited progress in the interim in the interim five years. Canada I gather at this conference has been appropriately celebrated largely because of the presence of the Minister of Health Jane Philpott at the opening. I beg you don't romanticize Canada we haven't yet achieved angelic perfection. I'd like you to realize that we also have a long way to go all you have to do is look at the response to the opioid crisis the response to what is happening in prisons there is a great deal yet to be done. And I must say that I had an intuitive solidarity with those who engaged in the demonstration at the opening of this conference. I happen to be extremely fond personally of Jane Philpott. I know her reasonably well we have worked together in the past she's done a remarkable job in the field of HIV and AIDS and she's probably the most genuine cabinet minister that Justin Trudeau has assembled in his vast panoply of cabinet ministers but inevitably Jane Philpott is constrained by the political realities around her and and what we really love about her is that she's the antidote to the 10 previous years when reactionary pre-paleolithic Neanderthals ruled Canada after all after all there are only so many fossils per decade that you can absorb. Think too if you will of ungas in 2016 and the incremental progress that was made through ungas and the disappointment of many about the way in which harm reduction was dealt with by the member states who participated in the debate around drugs so everybody is now looking to 2019 and between now and then I think we should make harm reduction a kind of co-selep internationally using every possible avenue to make the point that we confined and perhaps create and I want to run through seven quick possibilities with you and because the time is short and I am extremely self-conscious about this I have also have a plane to catch I'm going to speak with almost supernatural rapidity please bear with me particularly those who are doing the interpretation. Number one we've got to find a way of bringing a resolution before the Security Council of the United Nations that's not such a long shot the Security Council has already dealt with two major health issues HIV on the one hand and the Ebola crisis on the other and it's entirely to possible to make the argument that this has a public health dimension which should be taken seriously. The Security Council is also absorbed with questions of international peace and security and would therefore be inclined to view drug policy with skepticism. On the other hand if you put together Afghanistan, Mexico, the Philippines I think you can begin to make an obvious argument for international peace and security which might have some impact on a Security Council debate. I must say that I was quite overwhelmed this morning listening to the senator from the Philippines it was an astonishing amalgam of principle and courage which we all witnessed I was completely taken aback I don't know how she's managed to stay alive in the midst of that fascist dictatorship and it's an extraordinary I think congratulatory moment for the conference that she felt she wanted to be a part of it but it was also a moment I shall always cherish just to have just to have heard her. So the question of international peace and security then leads to who would introduce a resolution. You see the rotating nature of the Security Council puts the permanent members and the non-permanent members in a rotating chairpersonship month by month. If you can find the right country then that country has an absolute right to set the agenda for that month. Now there's some interesting countries on the Security Council at the moment Sweden Italy Ukraine Ukraine might find it entirely pleasurable to introduce something that would cause Russia enormous enormous embarrassment and concern. So the question is the question is how how do we design those kinds of things and I think that there there are organizations here in this room and others who show solidarity who can make the necessary overtures and at least scope out the possibilities of a Security Council resolution. After all Security Council is also dealing with the sustainable development goals and the third goal speaks to health for all and it's possible to shove this subject in under that rubric. So with the current focus on global public health I'd say that that's worth a reconnoitering. I don't think we'd have the same luck with the General Assembly of the United Nations there simply too many countries but curiously enough the Security Council having had precedence around global public health might be willing to think about it if it was vigorously pressed upon them. Number two talking about global public health I want to make the point that this very month a new director general will be elected as head of the World Health Organization. Unfortunately it's a little late now to insist that the credentials include the embrace of harm reduction but it isn't too late to demand either by the international bodies or by the harm reduction conference itself to demand that the new director general at the moment he or she there are three candidates two men and one woman at the moment he or she is elected make a statement shortly thereafter if I'm reasonable about it that indicates an affinity for an endorsement of all of the ingredients of harm reduction. You can't let these people have any time to think or wait they have to be pounced upon immediately because multilateralism is extraordinarily adept at damage control and avoidance and if we go after them right away it may mean something for a new director general of WHO to make a statement. Number three there is the process called universal periodic review which will be familiar to many of you particularly those who are doomed to live in Geneva and for for those of you who live in Geneva you will know that this periodic review occurs on a regular basis country after country measuring fundamentally their behavior around human rights and there is no reason in the world why country after country can't be challenged on the various components of harm reduction in the course of the universal periodic review there are submissions made on behalf of the NGO community submissions made by member states there is an open public debate it is entirely possible to confront countries that have behaved in unfathomably deficient ways with what they're doing and I think the universal periodic review is yet another way to put this on the agenda in an unrelenting methodical continuing fashion I mean that's what advocacy is all about is that you never give your adversaries a moment pause or peace and you keep after it and because there is so much that is legitimate decent humane profoundly urgent about the struggle that is being fought by drug users around the world on issues of harm reduction we have a cause which is worth the entire unflagging pursuit number four and this many of you won't know about it it gives me a delicious impish feeling there is later this year in the fall a conference being held in Moscow on tuberculosis now everybody knows the tie between injecting drug use and tuberculosis and some of the some of the consequences and no one at the Moscow conference on tuberculosis will be expecting some mole on some panel to raise the question of harm reduction in relation to tuberculosis it's an extraordinary opportunity and to do it in Russia on Moscow soil when no one is anticipating it but it's entirely legitimate let me assure you entirely legitimate in the context of the conference is something that should be thought about I haven't been invited to that conference yet I it's not a far-fetched idea because I have found myself over the last eight or ten months dealing frequently with issues around tuberculosis but but I don't know what will happen in the fall but I do put it before you because I can just imagine a panel of notables where one of them a person of principle speaks to TB but also makes the relationship with harm reduction in the presence of those who would wish that the subject never be talked about number five is the question of disruption that is bringing disruption to the confines of solemn debate when when people are discombobulated by those who put their views not aggressively but insistently and I'm thinking for example of meetings of the global fund to fund AIDS tuberculosis and malaria the global fund is entirely deficient in the way it responds to questions of drugs entirely deficient in the way it's responding to questions of what it calls countries in transition so that then that when they are raised to a higher economic status they are somehow then exempt from providing funding for those who need it it would be entirely appropriate for a demonstration to occur my god when the global fund feel here's about this I'll be eviscerated but that's it's entirely appropriate for a demonstration to occur when the global fund board meets to bring to the members of the board the need to take these issues seriously and there's some reason to suggest that they don't take them seriously the global fund is also struggling with the new executive director it went through an extraordinary internal fracas just a couple of months ago and they had to abandon the process to search for a new executive director they have one now at interim but they're about to choose another in the next couple of months again we can insist that amongst the candidates for executive director the questions are put where do they stand on drug policy how do they feel about the reality of drugs relating so strongly to at least HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis within their mandate the same should be done and has been done I know from time to time with the treaty bodies particularly the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and the treaty bodies that meet should have to face and confront a solid wall a solid monolith of determined people who insist that they pronounce strongly not equivocally not this tepid nonsense where you can read anything into the language that is used but strong and unequivocal assertions about the legitimacy that the entire world around Rick and his colleagues at Richard Elliott and his colleagues the entire world which they work in fighting the good fight for harm reduction and drug policy I must say that number six concerns me deeply and that's the involvement of civil society and the associations of drug users and there are so many things that can be done through civil society I was fascinated this morning to hear the Asian Association suggesting that we should all send letters to to Duterte to see if over time some impact can be felt equally the man who got up and said he was from act up if you want to see an entire compendium of unorthodox eccentric and idiosyncratic interventions then read the book how to survive a plague which is essentially a testament to the work of act up and you can see how the powers that be can be discomfited by an urgent rallying of people with conviction I I'm more and more persuaded as someone who has spent 50 or 60 years in advocacy that you can you can move the dial you can get these encrusted bureaucrats and these hostile people people to move if you never give up and that can be done by associations of drug users very fully providing we can find the kind of funding which is required funding that goes beyond George Soros and finally it seems to me that we've got to think strongly about the sort of thematic targets and for me forgive me for saying the obvious those targets are race and gender and I would pursue them in the most unrelenting fashion imaginable look I'm in my dotage I'm wildly over the hill I'm going to be 80 for God's sakes in the month of November I can barely stand it that I don't have another 80 years to fight the good fight but I why are you applauding for my are you all so sort of hostile in a subterranean fashion the the truth is that I am both bemused and sometimes dispirited and often uncomprehending by the unwillingness of people to confront what we know is true so around race even where African Americans in the United States are dealt with there is a kind of there's an identification of the disproportionate number of African Americans in jail and a relationship with drug offenses but very seldom is the word explicit racism used it's like the aboriginal peoples of Canada we we we understand as Canadians for those of you who are not Canadians what has been done to the aboriginal people of this country we know the truth and reconciliation commission and what it found and the recommendations it drafted we understand the horrors of the residential schools we recognize even now that we can't seem to get going the the investigation into the missing and murdered aboriginal women there's always this halting there's there's always this halting incrementalism when it comes to dealing with what amounts to explicit racism and when you're dealing with questions of drugs and aboriginal peoples it's it's simply necessary to understand that racism lies at the heart of our inadequate response it's not some kind of it's it's not some kind of inadequate bureaucratic or or medical indifference it's racism now similarly the response around gender it fascinates me to recognize here we are at a moment in time when feminism has been to some extent restored in public consciousness where you have a march after the moron was elected with of millions of people and millions of women who will take to the streets and the and the sense of solidarity even amid the misogyny the sense of solidarity and strength and determination of the women of the world is something to behold and for the first time in my memory we have the entire international community focused on meetings around women conferences around women initiatives policies programs it's fascinating and around the question of drug use around the questions of harm reduction women as we know are so terribly vulnerable and so disproportionately vilified locked up tortured divided from families leaving their children what in God's name is wrong with this world has the world gone mad and at the moment in time when women are finally the centerpiece of much of international's initiatives it's an excellent moment to say around harm reduction and women this is where we will call our our our cross we're gonna nail this issue to the cross and we're going to win it and we're going to use the tremendous and some ways exciting turbulence about the respect and revival for women we're going to see women at the centerpiece of the struggle so on the one hand you have race on the other hand you have gender and I beg you to take both intensely seriously now obviously there's the CND and obviously there are AIDS conventions and obviously there are the special rapporteurs I mean there are so many various components that we can bring to work in the context of advancing harm reduction and drug policy but if we fight on all those levels simultaneously then one day you break through now let me end with a faintly subversive observation I got a big kick out of Ethan Nathan natalman today he's absolutely one approach to follow but I want to tell you don't tell me to love my adversary I I'm I'm a democratic socialist if I had to hug Donald Trump or Stephen Harper I'd have a cardiac arrest I I have I have in my 50 or 60 years of dealing with advocacy the conviction that if you're steadfast and principled and uncompromising you can achieve a significant quotient of social justice sure you'll lose sometimes and then according to the poet you'll bleed a while and rise to fight again and then one day the pendulum swings and all the way through you haven't as they say in the United States crossed the aisle to embrace people on the other side I I can't embrace crypto fascists I've never been able to do it and I ain't starting now and I'm observing Ethan in the audience and I'm thinking thank God I'm going to the plane I I have to say that I thought it was a wonderful intervention this one I got a big kick out of it but I squirmed a little and I felt I should appease my squirming in this finale so all I say to all of you is that this is a this is a truly important international struggle it's not just one or two countries it's every country which is dealing with drug use the war on drugs the abuse of power the terrible demonization of wonderful decent human beings and I beg you to leave this extraordinary conference with the determination that you'll fight on all fronts front simultaneously and and and bring the Philistines to their knees thank you