 Our third speaker is Tenu Afafia. Tenu leads the human rights key populations and treatment access team at UNDP's HIV Health and Development Group. His responsibilities include overseeing the implementation of the report of the Global Commission on HIV and the law, as well as UNDP's partnership around health, technology, innovation, and access. He also co-lead the Secretariat of the UN Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, which issued its report in September 2016. He previously worked at the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia, where he undertook rights-based litigation and research into socio-economic issue, including the right to health. Tenu, please. Thank you, Ajeng. Good morning, Excellencies, colleagues and friends. I'd like to start my remarks this morning by thanking the organisers of this incredible conference for inviting UNDP to speak at today's plenary on human rights. It is both a privilege and a pleasure to speak alongside such distinguished human rights scholars, practitioners, and defenders. All doing extremely impressive work in sometimes difficult local settings. So this is my first harm reduction conference, and I've learned a great deal in the past day and a half, and I still look forward to learning a great deal more over the next two days. And I sure as hell hope that I'll be invited back next year as well to attend more of these in the future, because they're quite remarkable. Over the next 15 minutes or so, I would like to kick-start a conversation around some reflections around linkages with human rights and development discourses and why we at UNDP regard these often as two sides of the same coin. I'll briefly highlight two examples in the drug policy context that bring together for us the intersectionality between human development and human rights, namely the gender dimensions of drugs and the criminal justice system, as well as access to controlled medicines for palliative care and pain relief. I'll then conclude with one concrete proposal on moving forward with rights-based responses or approaches to drug policy. So as you all know, we're now well into the fourth year of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This landmark commitment by 193 member states of the United Nations comes with accompanying 17 sustainable development goals or SDGs, as we call them. These individual goals range from ending hunger, ending poverty, improving or ensuring health and well-being, promoting gender equality, protecting the environment, promoting inclusive economic growth and striving for peaceful, just systems bolstered by strong institutions. No lack of a mission there. Now, as important as each of these individual sustainable development goals are, it's also critical for us to remember, it bears remembering, that countries also committed to leave no one behind and to reach those furthest behind first. And that for us absolutely has to include people who use drugs if you want to see meaningful progress across a chain of development goals targets by 2030. It has to. The same UN member states who adopted Agenda 2034 years ago have also been making specific human rights commitments over the last several decades. These obligations date back to the United Nations Charter of 1945. The Constitution of the World Health Organization of 1946, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which came into force in 1948, various other international covenants, treaties, instruments, declarations, guidances, and human rights commitments that also appear in more than 160 national constitutions worldwide. Now, a number of speakers at Sunday's inspiring opening ceremony spoke of the need to see drug policy with fresh eyes. Over the last two days, we've been hearing how Portugal took the far-sighted step at the time of approaching drug policy, not just from a criminal justice perspective, but with a public health lens. Despite the impressive progress that Portugal has demonstrated, its leaders, both current and past, have highlighted the importance of remaining vigilant and continuing to put people at the center of drug policy reforms. The Outcome Document of the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs acknowledges that human rights and inclusive development are interlinked. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the document starts to flesh out two sides of the same coin in making these linkages. Our view at UNDP is that inclusive development is really only possible if human rights and evidence-based policy interventions are placed front and center in our work. And this logic applies as much as it would to poverty reduction, climate change, gender equality as it does to more drug policy-related work, including harm reduction, international or criminal justice reform, or alternative development. Now, there are a number of ways that inclusive development, human rights and drug policies intersect. But for the purposes of today's discussion, I'll focus on two examples. The first of these is the disproportionate impact that the criminal justice system has on women who either use drugs or are involved in the drug market. The evidence tells us that while men are more likely to be involved in drug possession, sale, or use than women, in most countries where the data are available, a higher proportion of women than men are in prison for drug-related offenses. In fact, women incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses are the fastest growing prison population. Many of them are first-time offenders incarcerated for minor nonviolent drug-related crimes. The same women then face additional barriers when attempting to access health services because these services have been designed with men in mind. We've heard some harrowing stories at this conference and elsewhere about how in some countries the simple act of being identified as a female drug user can trigger the issuing of a report to child protection services and in some extreme cases the termination of parental rights. Now, imagine risking the loss of custody of your children and how much of a deterrent that would be for those who could be accessing treatment or other care. And can we really then say that we're still surprised to see the treatment gap that exists between women and men? It's not all doom and gloom, though. There are several countries, mainly Latin America, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Paraguay, as well as England and Wales, that have started enacting law and policy reforms to address the harmful consequences of incarceration on women. And these factors take into account a number of issues ranging from age, economic status, immigration status, caretaking responsibility, as well as pregnancy. These measures for us illustrate or demonstrate how a combination of people-centered policies can protect, promote, and fulfill the rights of those left furthest behind, while also supporting, enabling, and inclusive development outcomes. The second example of intersectionality between inclusive development, human rights, and drug policies I'd like to speak to today is the issue of palliative care. Now, on Sunday evening, we heard the High Commissioner speak very powerfully about how denying access to pain medication for patients is not only unacceptable, but is a human rights violation tantamount to torture. We also know that access to medication, including for palliative and end-of-life care, is central to the attainment of SDG3, including targets around access to medicines, strengthening drug treatment programs, as well as universal health coverage. This graph from the Lancet tells a simple but striking story of inequality and two sides of a crisis. As we can see, in some developed countries, there can be more than a 3,000% distribution of opioid drugs, such as morphine or the equivalent, beyond what is needed in the country for palliative care and pain relief. In other countries, less than 1% of those requiring opioids to manage their pain and end-of-life care can access it. Access to treatment also includes access to pain medication, which is a fundamental human right. And we can't meaningfully speak about reaching universal health coverage goals by 2030 if we're not providing much more consistent and improved access to pain medications for those in need. As with the early example of women, there are countries who are leading the way and making informed approaches. Uganda has been one such leader in the field of pain management since the 1990s. It was the first country in Africa to recognize palliative care as an essential clinical service. It was also the first African country to provide morphine free of charge for patients living with cancer or living with HIV. In 2004, the government of Uganda amended its law to modify its narcotics policy to allow for specialized palliative care nurses as well as other practitioners to be able to prescribe and to supply morphine after they completed a specialized course or care in palliative care. Uganda has continued to innovate and has developed new ways of improving access including by setting up roadside clinics. Thanks to efforts by civil society organizations including NGO Hospice Africa, Uganda has helped to strengthen the capacities of health professionals across more than 18 countries in Africa. It has strengthened capacity not only on how to administer high quality palliative care but it has also taught officials from other governments how to advocate back in their countries to improve the legal regulatory environment. And we understand that Uganda's model has spread with ministries of health in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Swaziland or now known as Iswatini having adopted a similar model. Another country that has shown similar leadership on palliative care is Mexico which has made important legislative and policy changes to improve safe and adequate access to morphine. But I believe that a more detailed account of the reforms in Mexico are being presented at this conference and I look forward to learning more about the situation in Mexico as well. So it's important to say that the governments of Uganda and Mexico did not act alone in improving access to pain medication. In both countries sustained advocacy by civil society groups health care professionals, pharmacists and some political leaders were crucial to help overcome barriers. I will now turn to the final topic of my remarks today, namely proposing one concrete guidance or objective for us to coalesce around that addresses both human rights and inclusive development objectives. Both examples that I talked about this morning, the gender dimensions of the criminal justice system or access to medicines, affirm that rights based evidence informed people centered policies produce results. That said, we also still need clear structured guidance across various aspects of drug policy to ensure that progressive and systemic approaches are ingrained or mainstreamed into drug policy. And since the 1990s, various UN resolutions have acknowledged that countering the so-called world drug problem must be carried out in full conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms. This has been reaffirmed time and time again in every major UN political declaration on drug control since then. The reality though is that we've not always lived up to this commitment. A key challenge why this commitment remains unmet and there are many has been a lack of clarity as to what human rights law specifically requires of member states in the context of drug policy and enforcement measures. It is our hope that the international guidelines on human rights and drug policy launched last month at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna will help to provide some of that guidance to member states. These guidelines are the product of extensive legal research, expert review and multiple consultations with governments, civil society groups, communities of people who use drugs, academics, UN entities and experts, many of whom I actually see in the room today. The guidelines highlight measures that member states should take and also should refrain from taking in order to comply with the human rights duties as well as their concurrent obligations under the international drug control conventions and the commitments under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We believe that the guidelines can help to strengthen accountability at the local level while supporting people-centered policies. These guidelines cut across a range of substantive topics including criminal justice, public health and alternative development. And it is a tool for those working at the national level to ensure that human rights compliance at the local, national and international levels be they affected communities, human rights defenders, parliamentarians, judges, policymakers or others. The guidelines are available on the link which is on the page which leads you to an interactive website. And later this year we will also be publishing a more extensive and detailed version of these guidelines complete with commentary. Many thanks to the governments of Germany and Switzerland in particular, the Global Partnership for Drug Policies and Development for their support. And we're delighted that the guidelines have been co-sponsored by the International Center for Human Rights and Drug Policy at Essex, UNAIDS, WHO and UNDP. And I should also add that these guidelines would not have been possible without very valuable and I think specialized inputs from many of the people in this room. So finally it bears remembering that while we've seen progress in a number of countries to protect, promote and fulfill human rights principles as far as drug policies concerned, we at UNDP remain committed to supporting the development and implementation of rights-based, evidence-informed and people-centered drug policies. We look forward to working with many of you in the room including civil society groups, community of people living with drugs, who use drugs, representatives of governments and multilateral entities. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you Tenu. That is for touching the gender dimension. That is an important topic that is also rarely touched on the discussion on human rights and drug policy.