 Hello. Good afternoon. This is our last live stream show from the inside the Vienna International Center and in this session We will discuss human rights and drug control with my guests who are Damon Barrett from the International Center of Human Rights and Drug Policy and Susie also from the International Sorry, Julia also from the International Center on Human Rights and Drug Police and we have Ricky from Indonesia representing the Indonesian human rights NGO and I would start with a quote from Paul Hunt who was a High Commissioner of Human Rights many years ago and he said that the drug control system and human rights Existing parallel universes because there is so systematic and wide abuse of the human rights of people who use drugs In the name of drug control And actually those human rights violations are not reflected at all in the drug control system And now we are sitting here at this at actually the largest gathering of the of the drug control officials How do you see like? Is there any efforts now to to close this gap between human rights and drug control? The might just automatically came to me Maybe it's because I'm sitting closest or something and well I should clarify first that Professor Hunt was the special rapporteur on the right to health and When he said that he was actually at the International harm reduction conference in Barcelona, and you know that because you were there filming him say it so And at the time he was he was dead right, but since that time things have changed a bit now not so much on the ground unfortunately, but Professor Hunt was talking about a number of different levels So he had the disconnect in international law and policy and he was talking very specifically to about an Institutional disconnect at the UN level that mirrors what goes on in countries So he was saying look states will say one thing in Geneva At the WHO or at the World Health Assembly, and then they'll go off to Vienna and say something completely different on the same topic And he was saying that's the parallel universe is where they can wear different hats or different frames of reference and come up with Completely different policy conclusions for the same for the same issue And that's that's still somewhat the case one of the things that we've talked about here is that there's no Representative of the the UN human rights system based here in Vienna, even though there is one in New York There is one in Nairobi, and there's loads of obviously in in Geneva But that when he's when that speech was made it followed the year when the first ever human rights resolution was debated here in Vienna And that caused a big trouble some states really did not want us mentioning the words human rights here And these days the changes that that's that standard Language and now our dilemma is the extent to which it remains at the rhetorical level as if we don't have to change anything On the ground because that disconnect is definitely still there When I was counting, you know how many side events are about human rights at this event I counted eight Different you know side events and all that with human rights And there are also of course many other side events actually which are touching upon human rights issues So as I see that human rights become quite central now In the discourse in the drug policy discourse, and that was one of the key issues also discussed two years ago at the UN general General Assembly special session on drugs so How do you see that? How can how can the UN bodies contribute to improving the situation in the country level like do you think that Is there any way how what's happening here can have an effect on on for example in your country Rikim in Indonesia where the president declared the war on drugs and Many people are suffering because of that Thank you in Indonesia. We have UN odyssey office, and I think UN odyssey in Indonesia. They work closely with the National Analytics Board and in the past few years Indonesia has been implementing very punitive approaches on drugs and UN odyssey supporting these Operations as well. I think one of the things that they can do as a UN agency is moving away using period of measures when they support Government agencies in Indonesia UN odyssey help train police as well for example And it would be great to have human rights training not just anti-drugs operations as part of the police trainings and also help strengthening Judiciary for example because Of course still Drugs are still criminalized drug use export imports and those kind of things its violations of the law but as A country that Ratifies a lot of human rights instrument Indonesia also have to respect human rights And part of that within the judiciary is not to sentence the drug offenders to death melting And let alone we have a lot of unfit trial within the Indonesian legal system. It's it's heavily corrupted and many unfit trial cases Happening including in drugs cases very few lawyers willing to provide assistance for foreigners they don't get proper interpreters and Assistance from embassies for example are also lacking So these are a lot of elements of unfit trial and UN agencies you take into account and provide assistance to Indonesia to Strengthening improve their safeguard mechanisms Another serious violation of human rights of people who use drugs is the abuse in the name of treatment. There are many Centers where people are you know just kidnapped and kept there without any kind of Judicial process or any kind of sentence and They are oftentimes tortured and humiliated Do you see any progress that these centers will be closed? Do you see any efforts? That's that we can do for that There are some centers drug centers in Indonesia that use Non-medical interventions. There's one drug treatment facility in Indonesia that use Boiling so they put people Into boiling water and then they pray for these people. Hopefully to get a treat Recovered from their addictions and there are many Unusual practices of drug treatments and so there's a need for us to highlight into these drug so-called drug treatment centers because these are not based on human rights. These are not based on health approaches and And we have actually a lot of Harm reduction services in Indonesia and these are very successful. Unfortunately, these are Underfunded government doesn't pay attention much to this initiative Government is interested to be seen as tough on drugs to be heroic rather than Saving life through these harm reduction programs So I don't want to dodge the question But I want to move on from it just a little bit in that Okay, so this idea of what we started to call drug detention centers was a very big topic about five years ago Lots of work had been done by Human Rights Watch Lots of work had been done by the Open Society foundations looking at these and every UN agency eventually signed a big joint statement saying close these things down What goes on inside them is genuinely disgraceful everything from arbitrary detention to torture to evidence of Rape and sexual abuse Disgraceful behavior and of course no form of treatment itself, but It speaks to another issue. That's a bit a bit of a problem Which is that we can get kind of dominated by The big human rights issue of the moment. So then it was the drug detention centers. It's the death penalty It's the lack of access to essential medicines when what when you add them all up The problem is that drug control has for decades given a way to AD humanize people such that Massive criminal sentence prison sentences for nonviolent offenses are possible the death penalty is possible putting people in these Kind of centers is possible Describing people as junkies and and drugies and all of this kind of stuff is possible And and it's very easy to justify repression through a drug control lens And that's the actual human rights problem And this is why we want to we keep trying to flip it around people say we need to look at it through a health lens We need to look at the language here these days is we need to move to a person-centered approach Imagine having to say that Right as opposed to what? Well security lens and again you can justify a lot of repression through security too So for us, it's about trying to change something at a broader level about how the whole thing is looked at Because otherwise we're picking away at symptoms of it So can you think talk about your work in the international center on human rights and drug policy like what what you are doing there? How you are training students there? I think the first thing is to pick up on your first question around the disconnects between human rights and drug policy And sort of the disconnect between where we see now much stronger political commitments and rhetoric to the promotion and protection of human rights and venues such as the Commission of Narcotic Drugs and the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly coming out of the young gas outcome document and how that becomes an implementable real Reality in countries like Indonesia and really anywhere else in the world And one of the tools that we're developing in partnership with the United Nations development program Is is somewhat of us not a solution But a means by which that divide can become a little bit narrower And that's the development of international guidelines on human rights and drug policy Ricky has been part of the the initiative Damon as well and we have At this stage really great commitments from governments including the governments of Germany, Switzerland and Columbia with with funding that's been forthcoming and and it's quite clear that While the rhetoric and the existence of human rights is acknowledged embraced There's an understanding that these obligations exist and they can't exist in parallel to drug control obligations and commitments to dealing with the issues of drug policy at a national and local level there's a real lack of understanding of how the two come together and like Damon said it's time to change a broader narrative to Direct governments away from looking at the drug issue and looking at it from a is a human rights issue And so for the past year we've been in the process of really operationalizing this this project on guidelines And it's been a collective multi-stakeholder effort between governments UN institutional actors civil society actors and most importantly the people that are most directly affected by problematic drug policies and We've had a consultate. We've had several global consultations and meetings to sort of work through the nuts and bolts Which is quite a difficult process We've had meetings in Bogota At the University of Essex where our center is based And where there's rich knowledge Around sort of developing normative tools on human rights and drug or human rights broadly where Paul Hunt is also based And we have several plans in the coming year and well this year in Pretoria and South Africa Bangkok Thailand Ricky will join us And we'll also be meeting in a more collective dimension with the community of people who use drugs at the AIDS conference in Amsterdam To really understand how the guidelines are reflecting the needs and experiences of different communities So, you know, that's one of the the more research or impact oriented research Projects that we're working on But again moving back to this sort of disconnective knowledge bringing knowledge around human rights to sort of nerve centers of drug policy The University of Essex is a rich Consortium of students from all over the world who are future human rights leaders like one of the gentlemen to my left here an alumna alumni That don't have a lot of knowledge on the intersections between the two So it's a really important moment to capture the imagination of young human rights students around issue alerting them to the issue that drug policy is in fact an enduring a consistent human rights An issue of human rights concern So we've done that in a variety of different teaching engagements We have courses on human rights and drug policy Damon and some of our other colleagues join us for that We just had one and we integrate Teaching on human rights and drug policies into our modules for post graduates And also provide supervision for those that want to explore the issues and more full and their their dissertation activities So it's it's sort of a hodgepodge of teaching and impact and research But hopefully something that that it doesn't stay in sort of the the bubble of academia, but it permeates And it moves with the students throughout their professional lives I think it's definitely very useful and helpful when you are training young professionals and activists who will take back to this knowledge to their countries and Advocate for the rights of people who use drugs there What do you think about the the international organizations at the United Nations organizations? Many people would say you know that? Yeah, you know you see that in the Philippines, you know, there are mess Exegguracy or killings a lot of people are killed the United Nations But is our condemning this what's happening and and then the government is actually Ignores this this condemnation. So do you think it has still still has a relevance of What what this you and you an organization say if if they just cannot enforce that the the the reveal Well, I mean that that's a perennial challenge about the UN isn't it I mean a lot of the a lot of the UN agencies They're either specialized specialized agencies or or they're part of the UN secretariat But but they're an international civil service So it's very difficult to get them to they can't force states to do anything the real place where you want a bit of a bit of courage when it comes to something like what's going on in the Philippines is from other states and And some of the silence around that has been dreadful and and and from from Trump the the apparent support for it has been reprehensible and in the face of that UN agencies are weakened because the kind of the Moral and legal force of what they say is undermined by the political power of Just simply being having the cover of something like the United States to do nothing Trump the other day talked about bringing back when I bring back he actually talked about implementing President Clinton's death penalty laws but He he emboldened Singapore straight away to to write an op-ed an op-ed basically defending their use of the death penalty And they've ramped they've just initiated executions again this week So that that kind it's that kind of political support or not challenging these abuses That's really damaging and it undermines the ability of the UN human rights system to To be as effective as possible it could be And you know, it's it's not just a perennial challenge for the UN it's a perennial challenge for advocacy and advocates But it doesn't mean that it shouldn't continue and the pressure shouldn't continue to build It requires courage and tenacity and discipline to push against these powerful forces Particularly ones coming from from the Philippines and other other parts of the world were particularly egregious and systematic violations of human rights are happening and I think one of the you know, I think that's one of the One way in which human rights can be a powerful but blunt instrument to push against these punitive times But at the same time it's also and has to be understood as a tool to constructively engage with governments Outside of the more egregious systematic Contexts to begin to develop new trends and new policy Directions around drugs and again this brings us back to how the guidelines it can't be used as a tool to stop the killings But it could be used as a tool to slowly but surely Move governments ready for a change in directions and lead by examples and going back to what Damon says that it's important For governments to show real leadership real courage Within their own policies as well as condemning bad policies and other other parts of the world You keep coming from the the same region South East Asia How do you see that does international pressure makes a difference on the lives of people you are representing? I think it's Hugely significant. I mean just to reiterate what Julian Damon has said UN has limited Powers but doesn't mean that we should stop doing that With regard to Indonesia in the past in within just two years. They carry out three rounds of executions But I think continued Internet and international pressures help Us advocates working on the ground to convey the message to the government that as an active International player you are being watched by international community and I think that message is it's it's being heard now that Indonesia has been Moving slightly away from executions, but not from that penalty the death penalty is still in the low and the draft of the criminal code still Plays a death penalty as part of the Criminal sanctions, but it will be limited in terms of applicability, but I think We've seen that in the past couple of years Indonesia has Discouraged to talk about executions because they know when whenever they go abroad for example meeting at the UN or If they have meetings in Jakarta, and then they will be meeting with European ambassadors They will be asked by these government officials European government officials or international government officials that they want to see Indonesia moving away from that penalty and I think at some point they will understand that they need to move from from executions and criminalizations and the killings but touching on killings unfortunately Although we've kind of stopped using executions The practice is shifted to exodus a killing so it's kind of following what Duterte is doing in the Philippines in 2016 Amnesty International recorded there were 18 people killed from these operations in 2017 my We all we documented the the numbers of the killings from the media sources And in 2017 there were 99 people killed by police and the national narcotics board from these killings And they argue that Suspected drug dealers are trying to escape or trying to resist the arrest and that's why ended up in killings And of course it's a warring trend because you can see increased numbers from 16 in 2018 in 2016 to 99 in 2017 and we hope that international pressures continue to to monitor the Indonesia and to reduce the punitive measures that we are implementing at the moment because it's proven not effective since last time we had executions in July 2016 Drugs offenses continue to increase Doesn't doesn't go down the numbers doesn't go down drug users continue to be arrested Even the amount of drugs increasing like last month there were large drug rates in Indonesia like one tons two tons of Shabu Seize by the police and the BNN national narcotics board And it clearly shows that you don't Succeed to address drug problems and you need to Focus on health and harm reduction that Indonesia actually has and and it's very successful in addressing drug problems one of the main mantra of drug prohibition is saving the kids, you know that That that's actually behind of the that is that the argument behind of this human rights violations that we have to save the young generations we have to save children and and and and and provide The possibility for the right to live a drug-free life and they when you wrote a book about that the children of the drug war You put this issue in a different context So what do you think about this argument and and what do you think what drug polices are really serving the right of the child? So yeah, I edited that book I should say it was written by lots of people including a great chapter by Ricky and colleagues from Indonesia The book I should say for anyone listening as well as is available for free download It was a creative commons book. So children of the drug war. You can look it up Well, you know, I've been I've been Buried in the in the drafting history of the drugs conventions for for a while as part of PhD research and One of the things I was looking for is when did when did children become part of this international treaty debate? when did they get in there and The answer is is more than they just came in with the drug trafficking convention, which is true That's the first time children are mentioned when the drug control system was at its most punitive The question is why were they not included earlier on and there's two main reasons One of them is because states didn't like that intrusion into sovereignty that level But the next one is they didn't know what to do states didn't know what to do And so when they were drafting the earlier conventions They one government in particular said well in the in the absence of knowing what to do We just get more repressive But then the recommendation is what we still don't know what to do so let's just get more repressive and you end up with the 88 trafficking convention and The outcome of that is really that children aren't weren't considered in the development of this system They're they're they're an after-the-fact justification for ramping up the stringency of it So you see states having increased penalties for when children are involved, but they don't define what children's involvement means it could be anything from Running a message to and from two places to to being involved in rural farming right now Exploiting children the drug trades obviously wrong obviously wrong But when your legal definitions are so broad that anybody where young people might be involved for example in the opium harvest as just a Traditional thing that's done, but when you class that as the same level of exploitation as being forced into a gang That's a very different thing and even kids who are involved in gangs They're living in very poor areas with no opportunities and what you do is you describe the whole thing as a victim versus perpetrator Dynamic that might not reflect reflect reality, right? And the question I would ask anyway is I've been doing a lot of work looking at what states say to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child about their drug policy About their implementation of an article in that treaty that talks about drugs and states Feel freed by children's rights to say any number of things So one issue that kept coming up in in state reports to the committee and the rights of the child was the death penalty They would say well to protect children from drugs as we're required to do by the convention the rights of the child We use the death penalty, right? So that that that kind of freeing Human rights norm needs to be very carefully dealt with because the evidence suggests that states have felt Liberated by that human rights provision to do whatever they want When our view of of human rights law and human rights-based approaches to anything is to be more of a critical a critical ear or a critical voice Kind of a breath on the neck of government. It's like have you asked what you're doing here? So my question to any governments is really is really very simple How do your? Laws and policies in fact protect children and prove it Stop just saying it and then just going on and on and on with the same positive feedback loop Yeah, sure This is precisely the argument used by Indonesia to justify the drug war That we need to save future generation or the life of young people and precisely these Law that is intended to protect young children young people. This is the law that put young people behind bars In the past couple of years a few years We've worked a lot On many cases where young people like junior high school students or senior high school students got arrested Only for one very small joint of cannabis and then ended up in prison for two years three years five years And you know, it's it's horrible situation if they are in prison It's overcrowded. They have HIV problem inside the prison. They have TB problems If they've never encountered any criminal offenses and then they got in prison and then they learn new techniques for criminal offenses and They drop out from schools and cut loose the Education and the work and so this is the the law that is intended to a safe young people But it precisely does the opposite Conclude our discussion and following up what Damon started with Telling the government's what to do. So if you would be in a position to To produce a like a to-do list for governments who are sitting there in the committee of the whole and the in the plenary meetings What would be on the top of your list? Let's start with Julie. Oh gosh, that is a painful painfully hard difficult question. I mean, I think I Don't know if I'm gonna Answer it very well, but I think one of the things that I I would like for governments to understand or to consider the possibility of is The promise that an indivisible Collective understanding of human rights holds for helping to constructively and more Effectively design and implement drug policies. It's not just about stopping the killings It's about figuring out ways to get to the root causes of why there is such grotesque inequalities why Why there's such an absence of services to support and embolden young people To get a better education and to find better economic opportunities is absent And these are all really important human rights questions particularly around economic social and cultural rights And so to really embrace the indivisible and nature of human rights reflecting that Human rights is is part of our political social economic and cultural life. I think the most priority would be to have an open and honest debate on drugs and drug policy because it's currently dominated by Stigmatizing Discourse like drugs are seen as evil stay away from people's drugs. They are threats of the society those kind of images They use this Horrific languages to describe people who use drugs or people committing for drug offenses without knowing the backgrounds or the roots of the problems for example many women who are involved in drug trafficking and they are manipulated by their partners or Exploited by the traffickers But when they got arrested media portrayed them as queen of heroin instead of understanding Why they were first involved in drug trafficking without knowing that the root of the problem They only label with queen of heroin It kind of closed down the real problem that we have and so I think there's an urgent need to have this public debate on on drugs and it's and the policies that that we Implementing it in in in local context as well Yeah, so One of the one of the big problems in drug control is that the vast majority of time Effort and resources goes into law enforcement So I would I would say decriminalized personal possession immediately Decriminalized subsistence farming immediately and substantially reinvest resources into Health social care and development and away from law enforcement, which is not only ineffective But delivers the vast majority of the human rights problems that we all face Amen, thank you very much. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for those who watch the show You can follow the news on the cnd on cnd Block.org where you can find blocks about the cnd. Thank you very much