 So good afternoon, everyone. My name is Naomi Berkshine, and I'm the new Executive Director. And on behalf of everyone at Harm Reduction International, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to our 26th International Conference. So thank you all of you who travel from almost 90 countries around the world to be with us here in Porto, and to make this one of the largest international gatherings of harm reductionists ever. I would like to welcome in particular the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, His Excellency, the former president of Portugal, and member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, George Sampaio, representatives from the local and international networks of people who use drugs, and our other highly esteemed speakers for the opening ceremony and for the days to come. I also want to start by saying a special thank you to our conference partner, Abdesh, under the charismatic leadership of Jose Carrot, and make a special mention of Diana Castro, whose intelligence, coordination skills, and sense of humor were absolutely essential in getting this conference off the ground. It emits the joy of being here together. We also stop to recognize those who are no longer with us. If everybody could take a moment to stand, please. We have suffered significant loss in recent years for the passing of courageous activists and pioneers in harm reduction, our family. The end of any life brings sadness, but when it is so unnecessary, these deaths are preventable and caused by stigma and unjust drug policy. There are no words to properly capture the heartbreak and the anger. A number of people reached out to us in the past few months to find a way to memorialize at this gathering our friends and family who have died, and we are enormously grateful to those of you who've shared the photos on the screen behind me. But we also recognize that we could never hope to capture everybody who should be remembered. And for this reason, we've created a quiet corner in the exhibition hall. We invite you to stop there, contribute something in writing, a memento, or a photo. We honor these people we loved, and in celebration of their lives, their courage, and their resilience, I ask you to applaud. Thank you. Please have a seat. So it is an incredible privilege for me to convene this incredible community to help build on the years of work ensuring harm reduction is recognized for what it is, indispensable. This most importantly means contributing, continuing to highlight the Bank of Scientific Evidence demonstrating that harm reduction works. When this conference began nearly three decades ago in Liverpool, it brought together a few hundred people. They gathered to learn about how our founder, Pat O'Hare, together with Alan Parry, turned a bathroom into Liverpool's first needle and syringe program. Now the conference brings together tens of disciplines and practices at the intersection of drug policy, health, and human rights. This evolution to me, in many ways, reflects the evolution of harm reduction since the 90s. No longer can harm reduction be boxed as a medical response to infectious diseases. It's about housing for people who use drugs, about non-absence-based employment, the cure for hep C, racial justice, drug checking, the decriminalization of sex work, and so much more. While harm reduction has evolved, its underpinnings remain consistent, dignity, justice, and health. Sadly, where we have advanced, many governments and decision makers have continued to sit on their hands. There has been some progress in the last three decades, both in terms of governments providing harm reduction services and open political support for health-based, rights-based approaches to drugs. But in many cases, governments remain gripped by complacency and are failing to keep up with what's actually required. Globally, the availability of harm reduction services has stagnated and is failing to adapt to new trends in drug use and the crisis in overdose deaths. 99% of the global population who inject drugs live in countries with limited or no harm reduction coverage. And we know that injection use is just part of the broader picture. Not surprisingly, there's little money being committed to address this with a nearly 90% shortfall in funding for harm reduction in low and middle income countries. In the face of all of this, governments continue to spend billions of dollars on law enforcement and punitive drug control measures, obscene amounts of money for obscene policy decisions. They do this instead of investing in harm reduction interventions and policies that have been shown time and time again to protect people's lives and improve public health. We're not just faced with inactions and complacency, particularly when you consider that 35 countries still have the death penalty for drug offenses. The Philippines government continues to wage a brutal campaign against those seen to be associated with the drug trade and certain governments, the US and Bangladesh, praise or seek to emulate this barbarity. Other countries opt for more insidious policies to deny people's rights, be it limiting NGO functions and freedom of association, forcing people from the streets or excluding people from housing on the basis of their drug use. Public spaces for those who governments see as undesirable are ever more squeezed with drug policy, a convenient tool to demonize entire groups of people. When we gather here today, and anytime we stand together as a harm reduction community, we reject this. I say all of this for three reasons. To acknowledge the complexity of the time as we live in, to underscore our conference theme, People Before Politics, and to highlight how important our movement is in the broader fight for social justice. As every one of you know, the issues closest to our hearts are inextricably linked with issues of race and health, poverty and gender, discrimination and criminalization. Our goals of inclusive, fair and equitable societies are shared by many broader social justice movements, but many of these movements are limited by decades of being fed misinformation on drugs, misinformation that will hinder efforts towards truly inclusive societies. So it is my belief that the harm reduction movement is the essential missing piece. With our evidence, our commitment and our courage, we are key to broader social justice reforms. We're deeply privileged to be here in Portugal to learn about the health advances made under the Portuguese decriminalization model. And we couldn't have a more incredible group of people to start this conversation. Of course, there's room for continued progress, but the world still looks to the reforms that Portugal made 20 years ago. And with that, I'm delighted to now invite Jose Kerosch to the microphone. Jose is the Executive Director of APDESH, a leader in both Portugal and in Europe, and our partner in this conference.