 Thank you very much Firstly we would like to thank our colleagues and friends at harm doctrine international for this platform and the amazing effort that has been put into making this conference possible We would like to thank you for such an intense and concentrated opportunity to strengthen our knowledge and build our capacities of Carrying out our work towards the recognition and fulfillment of the human rights of people who use drugs We equally applaud much of the work that we have heard documented at this conference however, we urge caution in spite of increasing recognition of the centrality of a human rights-based approach to the HIV response and to a greater degree the response to Hepatitis C harm reduction is increasingly being reduced both in understanding and in practice to a biomedical approach and a set of technical interventions and palliative strategies This reinforces and is driven by the pathology Pathologization of drug use and of people who use drugs it effectively works as a way of sustaining the intense stigma and Marginalization to which people who use drugs are subject it neutralizes many other Possibilities of growth and evolution that would emerge from a community-driven approach We are concerned by the ongoing moralistic and stigmatizing definition of drug use as Intrinsically negative and wrong something to be condemned and cured from Rather than the small set of specific interventions that have historically formed the core of the HIV-driven response to injecting drug use Inputs like many of you with views harm-doction as a human rights response aimed to Improving quality of life. This not only applies to people who inject opiates, but people who use all kinds of drugs That by historical accident have been deemed criminal immoral and undesirable Harm reduction properly understood aims to mitigate many of the negative aspects of punitive prohibition To to this end input has produced the documents this one lunch before this conference entitled consensus statement on drug use under prohibition human rights health and the law The document is driven by the experiences and voices of people who use drugs in different places around the world People who have suffered systematic human rights violations fueled by misinformation and stigma Reinforced by political and economic interests. We're cautiously optimistic about the recent UNO DC paper of which many of us are aware But we believe that crucial issues have still not been addressed the wording of the conventions upon which punitive prohibition rests embeds discrimination and marginalization into drug policies It is only by addressing these conventions themselves that we will be able to truly remove the dominant punitive and the humanizing responses to drug use Be they routine incarceration, torture, violence, harassment, execution, extrajudicial killings, domestic intrusion, removal of child custody, forced sterilization, forced abortion or so-called Rehabilitation and mental treatment which has so often be used as means of control and the method by which our community The community of people who use drugs are framed as inherently problematic and in need of intervention We re-emphasize that a person who uses drugs as any other human being has the right to protection of their human rights Their human rights must be respected by the rule of law People who use drugs have the right to access the highest attainable health services and quality of life to have authority over their own body and decisions and to Cognitive liberty. This means the freedom of deciding over our state of consciousness or awareness as we may so choose The only ways to guarantee these rights and ensure that people who use drugs are able to achieve the recognition of a rights addresses the profound structural violence Discrimination and oppression to which we are subject and shake off all the pervasive stigma that has been attached to us is The complete dismantling of punitive prohibition Complete and an unbiased review of the international conventions and and then to the so-called war on drugs We're really stressed that these war on drugs is a war on people Human beings have been using psychoactive drugs for thousands of years psychoactive plan psychoactive animal based Substances and it is due to prohibition and the so-called war on drugs that harms associated with drugs with drug use are now Endemic and routine. We ask that you respect people who use drugs as experts on their own lives and their own lived realities It is only through respect Solidarity and compassion that we can move forward now as before we stress nothing about us without us So let's work together Towards a better world for everyone and for people who use drugs specifically. Thank you so much