 It is now my great honour to introduce our keynote speaker, the right honourable Helen Clark. Ms. Clark was the Prime Minister of New Zealand for three successive terms, and is the Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. During her time as Prime Minister for New Zealand, she engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social, environmental and cultural spheres. In April 2009, Helen Clark became administrator of the United Nations Development Program. She was the first woman to lead the organisation and serve two terms there, where she led UNDP to be ranked the most transparent global development organisation. In July 2020, Commissioner Clark was appointed by the Director-General of the World Health Organisation as co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. If our opening press conference is anything to go by, we are in for a treat with Helen's address tonight. Thank you so much. I've greeted the iwi, the tribes, I've greeted the Indigenous language of New Zealand, I've greeted the chiefs, and I've welcomed all of you, talofa lava, malua lalay, whakalofa lahiatu, kiorana, nisambulavanaka, talofa, and warm Pacific greetings to you all. Can I begin by acknowledging the Boon Wurrung and Wau Wurrung peoples as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, and by paying my respects to all their elders past and present, and by extending my respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Islander straight peoples here today? Well, I'm here as chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and I bring thanks from our commission to everyone here playing such important roles in harm reduction. And thank you, Naomi, and Harm Reduction International for inviting me to speak. Our commission was set up in 2011, and it's advocated for policies on drugs which are based on research evidence, human rights, and health and well-being. And harm reduction plays an essential role in the approach we advocate for. From the earliest days of harm reduction, people in front-line services understood that the harms caused by drug use could be mitigated without requiring that people stop using. And the aim was to provide whatever levels of support people were willing to accept and to support the agency of individuals. But of course, at the national and international policy levels, things have never been quite so simple. The concept of harm reduction and its interventions has generated debate and tensions from when it was first raised in international drug control fora in the mid-80s. And needless to say, harm reduction has always been a challenge and a very good challenge to the punitive approaches which the International Drug Control Conventions have mandated for so long. That's because to be effective, harm reduction can't and doesn't insist on abstinence-based prevention and therapies. It meets people who use drugs where they are, and so sets out to build trust with populations so often marginalised and stigmatised in our societies. So harm reduction has become a game changer in the provision of support for people who use drugs. But it is really so tragic that more than six decades after that 1961 single convention on narcotic drugs came into being that we're still confronted by damaging international law on drugs and the so many negative impacts and consequences intended or unintended, so called punitive, prohibitionist policies continue to ruin human beings' lives around the world. The prohibitionists, of course, set goals of eliminating or substantially reducing the numbers of people who use drugs and the volume of drugs consumed. Well, against the targets they've set themselves, six decades of this flawed approach have demonstrated its complete failure. For example, all the evidence we have, including from the World Drug Report, is that drug use keeps going up, not down. We see the reports from UNAIDS reporting that the risk of acquiring HIV is 35 times higher among people who inject drugs than among those who don't. We see the new study just out in the Lancet reporting that 15.2% of people who inject drugs are living with HIV and that 38.8% have a current Hep C infection. We see harm reduction internationals, global overview of the death penalty for drug offenses. 35 countries still provide for that and around a dozen still apply a mandatory death penalty for certain so-called drug offending. We've seen in the past 10 years at least 4,000 people executed for drug offenses around the world and we are clear at the Global Commission that the use of the death penalty, while abhorrent in general and in total, with specific respect to drug offending is disproportionate treatment and therefore a breach of international law. We've also seen these punitive drug laws drive over-incarceration, prison overcrowding, penal reform international reported last year, one in every five people in jails around the world is there for drug offenses. And what a relief not to be imprisoning those who use or are in possession of drugs. And then let's consider the particular devastating human impact of the opioid overdose crisis, particularly dire in the United States, Scotland and Canada. In the US, those deaths are constituting around two-thirds of all drug-related deaths, a significant number of which could be prevented with better access to harm reduction services. We've also seen negative consequences of the current prohibitionist approaches leading to more high-risk behavior such as unsafe injecting, deterring people in need of services from seeking them and we see so much resource going into ineffective and punitive responses instead of into health and social programs. And we see so many millions of people around the world with the long-lasting negative consequences of having had a criminal conviction. So bad law policy conventions need to be overturned and for the global commission campaigning against prohibition and also for the legal regulation of drugs is our top priority. It's estimated that rather than a hundred billion US dollars a year is being spent on trying to enforce prohibition. Imagine just having a tiny fraction of that to put into more harm reduction services. And this vast expenditure going on the punitive side, of course, is dragging resources away from what could otherwise be possible for harm reduction. We simply don't have it widely enough available globally at the scale required, for example, to end the AIDS pandemic. Fewer than 2% of people who inject drugs are living in countries with the UN-recommended levels of coverage of needles, syringes, and opioid substitution therapy. And of course, in so many countries still, harm reduction services are virtually non-existent and worse, some countries criminalize possession of syringes as drug paraphernalia, even including those supplied by needle and syringe exchange programs. Let's also be clear that prohibition and criminalization of use and possession have had especially harmful consequences for the most vulnerable members of our societies. That has included many women, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, young people, people who were living with HIV and AIDS, members of the rainbow communities, homeless persons, sex workers, among others. The list of human rights violations, linked to enforcement of prohibition, is just so long. And this suffering must serve as a constant reminder of the need to move away from punitive approaches to evidence-based policies and law which respects and upholds human rights. Harm reduction is such a key part of this change and indeed is part of a wider movement for human rights, working with intersectoral human rights movements around the globe. So coming to our challenges then, so often embedded in current laws and in cultural and social norms, not least in stigma against people who use drugs. We see so many policymakers still reluctant to accept that the complete eradication of drugs is both an unnecessary and an impossible goal. They may feel that supporting harm reduction somehow is condoning the use of drugs. The result of thinking like that is that the funding allocated to harm reduction continues to be vastly exceeded by that that goes to law enforcement. And this is a considerable political and practical obstacle to provision of harm reduction services and one which requires a paradigm shift in how drug issues and how people who use drugs are perceived. But of course we must acknowledge that there are very exciting successes in harm reduction and Naomi, your global state of harm reduction 2022 report, points out that we now have 105 countries including supportive references to harm reduction in the national policy documents. We are seeing more countries implementing harm reduction services. I see listed in the 2022 report new needle and syringe programs now available in Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Seychelles and Uganda. Drug checking, another tool which can minimize harm and prevent deaths, is catching on. And many countries now offer this service to some extent, especially at festivals and clubs but also increasingly at harm reduction centres and needle exchanges. I'm pleased to say that in 2021 New Zealand became the first country in the world to legalize drug checking completely. Now of course further deaths from overdoses could be prevented by more far reaching solutions. Advocates we know to North America have been pushing hard to access safer supply of drugs. This is because overdoses are often caused by a person using a substance or substance they didn't know they were taking, or when they take a different dosage from what they thought they were taking. We all know street drugs don't come with labels or quality control, so knowing what you are taking and being able to dose appropriately would be such a game changer. Obviously we're following with great interest, British Columbia's ambitious pilot aimed at decreasing the number of overdoses and reducing stigma around drug use. Peoples with addictions there who have not been able to stop using after having the services have been able to access a prescribed safer supply of a range of substances since March 2020. And I understand that advocates in Vancouver have also been distributing label packages of heroin, meth and cocaine and they've been doing that to those not eligible for prescription supply. It's all about saving lives and preserving health. Also in British Columbia since this January people found in possession of up to 2.5 grams of some drugs will no longer be criminalized. We've seen New York City implementation of safe consumption rooms saving the lives of hundreds of people since the opening of their monitored drug consumption on sites in November 2021. And a big shout out to the ACT here in Australia. We're just all taking inspiration from the way that ACT is moving. You introduced, I understand, a fixed drug testing site last year. A decision to decriminalize possession of illicit drugs in small quantities taking effect in October this year. And you were ahead of the game in 2020 when you decriminalized for adults possessing or using small amounts of cannabis. So this is really exciting from one across the ditch to see this happening. And also exciting to see that earlier this year based on the success of the Melbourne supervised injection room the Victorian government has introduced legislation to make the medically supervised injecting service ongoing. And just a word on the state of things in New Zealand. Since 2019 the New Zealand police have operated under what I call a partial direction because it could go a little further and be more helpful. But under a partial direction to divert users of drugs to harm reduction services. As a result charges and convictions have come down a number although not as much as was hoped for or would be possible if they dropped the qualification and law that the diversion should be in the public interest. In my view it's always in the public interest. But if you give discretion police will use it unfortunately. In New Zealand Māori are disproportionately impacted by prohibitionist approaches to drugs. Making up 48% of those convicted for drug possession offenses when Māori are 15% of the population and just under 62% of those who are sentenced to prison for these offenses. So this is a very significant issue in our relations between Māori and the state. In the Northland region of New Zealand since 2017 there has been a very good methamphetamine harm reduction initiative Te Ara Oranga. It has very strong police government department and community support. Unfortunately it has not yet had the nationwide roll out which was promised. And my foundation Helen Clark Foundation partnered with New Zealand Drug Foundation last year to reduce a report recommending large upscaling of harm reduction around meth and for the necessary funding to be allocated to that. So we live in hope. Now moving from here as Naomi said we can't ignore a couple of the huge challenges in the world's current poly crisis and the implications for people who use drugs. The war on Ukraine for example. How disruptive can that be for people trying to access harm reduction services? People carry on trying to do their best but an act of conflict so it's even more difficult. And then the pandemic highlighted massive disparities in the delivery of harm reduction services around our world and at its height with the lockdowns directly affected the right to health of millions of people who use drugs. It is so important that harm reduction services are made resilient to adverse events like the old saying the post must always get through so must harm reduction services. Fully funding harm reduction and viral hepatitis treatment is a must and providing support through initiatives like the Global Hepatitis Resource Mobilization Conference taking place at the end of May this year is absolutely crucial. At the Global Commission we will keep on calling for developing national legal frameworks and practices around drugs which are consistent with human right norms. We say there must be universal access to harm reduction services as there must be to control the central medicines for pain relief and palliative care. We say there must be decriminalization of drug use and possession for personal use a move to legal regulation and an end to police violence and harassment. It goes without saying that over incarceration and disproportionate sentencing including the application of the death penalty should cease. We should see inclusion equity and non-discrimination as the fundamental principle of all policies. In our 2018 report titled Regulation the Responsible Control of Drugs we addressed the need to tackle illegal drug markets and the harms that they cause by transitioning gradually towards regulated markets for supply. In practice this can mean countries creating legal markets for lower harm drugs like cannabis as Canada for example has done and it can also mean finding ways to increase access to safer supply of substances such as opioids and stimulants in order to reduce overdoses and tackle addiction as a number of jurisdictions already are. We also recommend explicitly aligning drug policy with implementation of the sustainable development goals. For example the Health SDG number three is about ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all that should encompass health-based approaches to drug policy. And finally we're calling for health system strengthening strategies to explicitly include harm reduction as a pillar and for national responses to problematic drug use to provide at scale services for people who need them so no one is left behind. Just like the suffragettes all those years ago who dared to fight for the right to vote we must fight for the right to health and to harm reduction. Existing legal barriers and political barriers to harm reduction need to be removed everywhere. Now more than ever we need strong political will to address the funding gaps in harm reduction and to reach the UN AIDS 2025 90% target on coverage of safe injecting practices among people who inject drugs. Our political leaders at all levels of government need to stand up for harm reduction and recognise that this is a human rights issue. Ours is a shared mission to make harm reduction services available and accessible to all and uphold the human rights of every human being. Thank you. Thank you very much Commissioner Clark. Now it's worth mentioning if you're from Canberra and you want to hear Helen Clark shout out your jurisdiction again you can get it on the conference app. We've got a WebEx app downloadable look for harm reduction international conference and you'll be able to replay all the plenary speeches throughout the week. We also have two streams all day every day that are being screened. So the delegates who are overseas can join us as well. Now.