 I would like to thank Arm Reduction International for inviting me to speak on this panel. As we look ahead to the upcoming United Nations General Assembly special session on drugs in April of 2016, I would like to recall that successive UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council resolutions have called for international cooperation in fostering an evidence-based, integrated, multidisciplinary, mutually reinforcing, balanced and comprehensive approach to drug demand reduction policies and programs, something that it required at the international, regional and domestic levels. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, under which my mandate special reportorship on torture and other cruel and human or degrading treatment or punishment operates has repeatedly asserted that it is imperative for states to respond to the challenges posed by the drug use in full conformity with international law, and particularly with full respect for all human rights and the inherent dignity of all persons. My mandate has consistently joined other UN mechanisms and advocates around the world in expressing concern about the reality that drug control regimes around the world habitually fall short of human rights standards and often even result in egregious violations of human rights. In my 2013 report on torture in healthcare settings, I explained that people who use drugs are a highly stigmatized and criminalized population, whose experience of healthcare is often one of humiliation, punishment, cruelty and even torture. In many countries drug users suffer discrimination, they are forced to accept treatment, marginalized and frequently harmed by approaches that emphasize criminalization and punishment, as opposed to harm reduction and associated evidence-based approaches that have been proven to protect human rights, limit personal suffering and reduce the incidence of HIV. State drug policies that restrict effective drug treatment frequently result in severe physical pain, suffering and humiliation, and a litany of abuses amounting to cruel inhuman and degrading treatment, and even torture are often committed against persons who use drugs in the name of treatment or rehabilitation. For instance, reports from countries around the world and particularly East and Southeast Asia as well as Eastern Europe indicate that persons detained en masse in state-run drug detention centers are arbitrarily detained and coerced into treatment or testing, which in itself can constitute a violation of the right to physical integrity. They are frequently subjected to severe mistreatment and punishment, including forced labor. The same is true for similar privately run facilities, which have been documented in Africa, Latin America and even in the United States. In my report, I recommended that such compulsory drug detention and so-called rehabilitation centers throughout the world should be closed without delay and replaced with voluntary evidence-based and right-based health and social services in the community. Investigations to ensure that abuses, including torture or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment, are not taking place in privately run centers for the treatment of drug dependence must be given priority, as should prosecution and punishment of perpetrators. International law obliges states to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish such abuses even when they are committed by private actors. Furthermore, I have called for an end to international funding and support for the operation of existing drug detention centers or for the creation of new centers. Any decision to provide funding should be made only following careful risk assessment. If provided, that funding should be clearly limited in time and provided only on the conditions that the authorities firstly commit to a rapid process for closing drug detention centers and reallocating resources to scaling up voluntary, community-based, evidence-based services for treatment of drug dependence. And secondly, replace punitive approaches and compulsory elements to drug treatment with other evidence-based efforts to prevent HIV and other drug-related harms. Any centers that continue to operate as the authorities move to close them must be subject to fully independent monitoring by means of effective mechanisms for monitoring dependence, treatment practices and compliance with international human rights norms. Another form of ill treatment to which persons who use drugs are subjected is the denial of opioid substitution treatment, including as a way of eliciting criminal confessions through inducing painful withdrawal symptoms. The denial of methadone treatment in custodial settings has been declared to be a violation of the right to be free from torture and ill treatment in certain circumstances. And in my report, I concluded that similar reasoning should apply to the non-custodial context, particularly in instances where governments impose a complete ban on substitution treatment and harm reduction measures. The common practice of withholding emergency medical treatment and or antiretroviral treatment from HIV-positive people who use drugs on the assumptions that they will not be capable of adhering to treatment also amounts to cruel and inhuman treatment, given the level of physical and psychological suffering that occurs as the disease progresses. Indeed, such practices constitute abusive treatment based on unjustified discrimination solely related to health status. By denying effective drug treatment, state drug policies intentionally subject a large group of people to severe physical pain, suffering and humiliation, effectively punish them for using drugs and trying to coerce them into abstinence. In complete disregard of the chronic nature of dependency and of the scientific evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of punitive measures. It is therefore critical that states ensure that all harm reduction measures and drug dependence treatment services, particularly opioid substitution therapy, are available to people who use drugs, in particularly those among incarcerated populations. Other problematic practices that breach the human rights of persons who use drugs include laws specifically that specifically single out the status of a drug user as a stand-alone basis for depriving someone of custody or other parental rights and the use of drug registries where people who use drugs are identified and listed by police and healthcare workers in violation of confidentiality laws. Such practices at a minimum amount of humiliating and degrading treatment and can lead to even more severe forms of ill treatment. In my capacity as special rapporteur in torture, I have also consistently reminded states of their fundamental obligations not to extradite or refu-layer persons to another state where they could be subjected to torture or ill treatment. Similarly, the imposition of the death penalty for drug offenses is clearly in violation of international human rights law, which although it does not yet absolutely prohibit, the death penalty significantly restricts its application to the so-called most serious crimes. Nevertheless, it is reported that at least 32 states around the world prescribe the death penalty for drug offenses, which cannot be designated to this category and hundreds of such executions are carried out each year. It is my hope that going forward, evidence-based harm reduction measures operating in full compliance with international human rights norms, including the right to be free from torture and other ill treatment, will increasingly come to define drug policies and programs at the international and domestic level. I thank you again for the invitation to address this important gathering and I wish you success with it. Thank you very much.