 So, it is my very great pleasure to invite to the microphone Mr. Glema Motlanti, the former president and former deputy president of the Republic of South Africa, including former deputy president of the African National Congress, the ANC. He's currently the chairperson of the Oliver Original Tambo School of Leadership and also the chairperson of the African National Congress Electoral Committee that oversees ANC's provincial and national leadership elections, including the election of the current South African president for a second term, and other leaders who have now ascended into national government and the National Assembly in South Africa. I think, you know, if our closing ceremony is to help us to look into the future, is a boost to go home with. I can't think of a better leader to set that vision than President Motlanti. Thank you very much Naomi for your warm words of welcome. Let me also recognize and greet my fellow panelists, Gabriel Williams, Paul Hunt, and Judy Chan. And good afternoon to all of you. But first off, I would like to thank Ham Reduction International for providing this dynamic forum to share the latest research and discussions on practices in drug use, harm reduction, and human rights, especially at a time when the voices of the people most affected by drug policies around the world are in desperate need for not only policy reform, but a pathway that navigates communities to realizing shared long-term value within a system that abolds compassionate and sustainable outcomes and replaces harmful practices with human-centered science-based development. By mending our political, economic, and social approaches and building a language and understanding of holistic concern, we can create a standard for the entire world. Over the last few days, we have learned so much from each other, confirming that there is strength in solidarity. As people, as a community, and as a global movement, we can rally and unify social forces and ensure that the paradigm does shift with regard to drug policy. Year on year, this conference attracts diverse and wide-ranging individuals and organizations who gather to harness their abilities, develop partnerships, exchange vital science, and chart pathways towards a more humane, equitable, and inclusive society for all. Guided by evidence and the science of what helps to deliver shared health objectives and social goals, we are further able to protect, respect, and fulfill the right to health without prejudice or stigma. This is the true potential of harm reduction practices. Harm reduction improves public health, is cost-effective, may decrease or eliminate risky practices among people who use drugs and significantly reduces disease transmission and fatal overdose. Therefore, supporting and strengthening harm reduction services in all regions around the world is an essential tool in the Delicate Balancing Act of sustaining and transforming human life. With this in mind, could the harm reduction context serve as an inspiration and a platform for us to innovate new ways to organize and coordinate our campaigns? To answer that question we need to dip into history. It was on December 10, 1948, with the birth of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights that UN member states pledged to promote respect for the human rights of all. However, for the purposes of this conference, let us fast forward to 1961 UN single convention on aquatic drugs that listed those substances that required strict legal controls. In an article in Criminology and Criminal Justice by Stuart Taylor, Julian Buchanan and Tami Ayas, entitled Prohibition, Privilege and Drug apartheid, the failure of drug policy reform to address the underlying fallacies of drug prohibition. The authors eloquently explained the following which may shed light on a global pattern of power dynamics and allow me perhaps to paraphrase, quote, policies of drug decriminalization, legalization and regulation are materializing in a number of jurisdictions around the world a phenomena welcomed by critics of prohibition who have long exposed its lack of evidence-based efficacy and legitimacy, close quote. Whilst these reforms have been posited as progressive, Taylor Buchanan and Ayas argue that they represent merely a metamorphosis of prohibition whereby the face of drug policy changes yet the fundamental principles remain unaffected. They go on to illustrate how inadvertently this reform revolution camouflages the underlying contradictions that have lain at the heart of global drug policy since they were enshrined in the United Nations single convention on narcotic drugs in 1961. By exposing how the fundamental inconsistencies of drug prohibition continue to be accommodated in policy reform, the authors identify the untenable flawed assumptions underpinning drug law enforcement and prohibition and that certain fallacies used to legitimize drug prohibition lack an evidence base and instead draw upon myth and reductionist discourse that obscures nuanced drug policy debate. These fallacies arbitrarily frame particular substances as drugs or meeting other substances as legal and socially acceptable and skew the risks of drug use by focusing almost exclusively on specific types of use and users and concentrating attention upon apparent associated negative outcomes. The authors reveal how this process allows certain circumstances to attain an unwarranted position of privilege whilst others are prohibited creating what they term a drug apartheid, a deeply divisive system of segregation and punishment determined by the substance used. With a focus on marginalized minorities, black and indigenous peoples, Taylor, Buchanan and Ayas succinctly go on to give reason for how the central tenets of prohibition remain within liberal reforms that is the ability to criminalize and severely punish those who use drugs. They explain how such processes have been historically steeped in prejudice resulting in a racially motivated war on drugs and despite reform, discrimination and inequality endures. No doubt some, if not many, delegates here today may agree that given the lack of evidence and scientific analysis upholding both prohibition and well-intentioned reforms that a repeal of drug laws is necessary. With history as a teacher, we may witness how the human race certainly waits until it hangs precariously on the precipice before it rallies to organize, to respond and to act. For a change in course away from an abyss of enduring suffering, all indicators point to harm reduction as model for humanity. It was repeated throughout many of our discussions that there is a need to address the challenges faced in the implementation of harm reduction services. In many places, availability, accessibility and quality of services remain important issues to tackle while services are also unevenly distributed in most countries. Since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, it has had the impact of adding extra layers of challenges to communities around the world and particularly for people who use drugs. In countries where harm reduction services exist, they were often forced to close or be reduced and public health was militarized. In Africa, the pandemic has had a debilitating impact on HIV and harm reduction service as limited operating hours, fewer outreach programs and economic challenges resulted in poorer access to services and increased risk taking. However, such crises also demonstrated the resilience of services led by people who use drugs, who adapted the operations to ensure that people in need could still benefit from opioid agonist therapy and other relevant services. By recognizing that prohibition and criminalization have put people at even more risk, further stigmatizing and marginalizing people who use drugs and who are involved in drug trafficking and production, we encourage local and national governments to adopt a public health and human rights approach to drug policies based on scientific evidence. To this end, the Global Commission recommends five pathways to drug policies that work. One, put people's health and safety first. Two, ensure access to essential medicines and pain control. Three, end the criminalization and incarceration of people who use drugs. Four, refocus enforcement responses to drug trafficking and organized crime. And lastly, regulate drug markets to put governments in control. However, even within the harm reduction services, there lies a stuck empathy gap. How do we narrow this gap to ensure that no one falls through the cracks of this divide? Perhaps it is by applying an expanded contextual understanding that stigma already exists for marginalized people and that the negative effects of shame and exclusion doubles down on the stigma of substance use disorder and those who use drugs. However, it takes political will and leadership to implement harm reduction practices. No two countries nor communities are exactly the same and therefore it may be helpful to have customized programs which involve the marginalized and people who use drugs. And tailoring the interventions to suit a community allows us to add to the knowledge pool and advance harm reduction. And so, if we are to interrogate with intentionality, how we can be more helpful and reduce harm, then we are to organize and mobilize for the investment of more resources and dedicate more of ourselves to study and develop, to the study and development of harm reduction services in more communities, more people everywhere. Again, taking history as a shepherd, we may understand more clearly that the future is not a place we are going to, but a place we create through our own actions. And in so doing, we must support and propel more platforms such as the Human Reduction International Conference to further refine the definition of our historical mission. Yes, that is what it is. It is a historical mission. To affect an influence policy and therefore to shape the outcomes we hope for, we must organize ourselves for common benefit. Through solidarity, we must be conscious that our agency as civil society must come to the fore. That these issues are not just for one organization, but for all of civil society, to further unite as an organized movement for the common good. During the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a global anti-apartheid movement developed. For instance, in the United States of America, an organization called TransAfrica, led by Randall Robinson, tracked down and called out American corporates that were investing in South Africa under the oppressive regime in order to isolate these companies in support for the call to disinvest from apartheid. So what is needed is a global movement which can coordinate and share information so that campaigns can be mounted in each and every country. Generally speaking, people always form organizations for a purpose, and so the point is to find synergies and meeting points in perseverance of a common cause like rivulets which decant into a mainstream. This conference not only serves as an opportunity to reflect but to identify new ways to increase our voice and to coordinate and channel our efforts towards the creation of a fair and just world order. Let today, the last day of the conference, be the first day of our re-energized and more consented effort to improve drug policy at local, to regional, and to global levels. There is strength in solidarity, so let us capitalize on that by matching capital's ability to nestle and settle everywhere in the world. And finally, if we may suggest a watch weight for those who use drugs and marginalize communities, it would be nothing about us without us. Thank you for your kind attention. Thank you so much, President Modlanti. I think I speak for everyone when I pause to reflect how powerful it is to have a former president come forward, guided by logic, guided by science, the sense of compassion and justice, and we can hear that message loud and clear. So thank you again.