- Details
- Category: News
- Published: 08 November 2013
We publish a short summary of one of the CND Intercessional meetings that was held among the UN Member States, with a direct impact on international drug policy.
ECAD is a member of Vienna NGO Committee (VNGOC) that is advocating for a recognized role of NGO grass-root work by the UN and in its Member States. Those of our members who are well-aware of their national participation at the CND events and can take part in these meetings in a state delegation - please do so. Also, we need your voice and active participance in the VNGOC, so contact us with your feedback, suggestions and ideas!
NGOs were allowed to be present at the meeting this Tuesday, so many of the well-financed harm-reduction and Open Society offspring-NGOs visited Vienna indeed.
Michel Perron, Chair of the VNGOC, made a proposal for a Joint Ministerial Statement of the 2014 High Level Review by the CND. Any NGO, a member of the VNGOC, can influence this kind of proposal, we need to be vociferous and watchful!
Have a look at the wording of the document to be used at the coming 2014 CND - directly connected to the UN Conventions on drugs, - being formed.
Here is the summary that ECAD can share with you, thanks to our work in the Vienna NGO Committee on drugs (PDF) :
The debate was based on the Chair’s draft of 30 October, and was directed to finding political consensus. As requested by states, the 30 October draft’s structure was changed to the format as suggested by res 56/12, i.e. Achievements, Challenges, Priorities for the three thematic pillars: Demand Reduction, Supply Reduction and Money Laundering and Judicial Cooperation
The first part of the meeting allowed MS to share wording suggestions on the whole document, the second part tried to clean up the proposals in the draft para by para to establish acceptable language. At the end of the meeting, only the first 6 paragraphs had been discussed with regard to cleaning up, but were not finalized yet.
Key issues
Paragraph 6 Decriminalization and Legalization
“[Member states] take note of the worldwide active debate on the consideration of new approaches towards tackling the World Drug Problem, including a greater focus on public health, the well-being of users and the demand aspect of the drug problem, the legalization and decriminalization of the use of certain drugs, and emphasize the need for an open, transparent and forward looking discussion on these issues within the multilateral system.”
The wording of the paragrph was opposed by many delegations (USA, CAN, ITA, VEN, ARG, ESP, RUS, CHN, GER, SWE, PAK and others). Deletion or alternative wording was suggested during the first part of the session. During the clean-up part, suddenly POR showed its support for the wording “decriminalization” and refused deletion of the whole para. It was decided to settle the issue during informal and the meeting closed after that.
Para 9 Civil Society
While ARG questioned the civil society contribution to the review process, most other comments were in support of civil society. IRL mentioned positively VNGOC and the survey. AUT, ESP and NOR made some useful suggestions.MEX suggested to follow the wording from the GA omnibus resolution of last year.
As the clean-up negotiations ended before, no final wording was decided on.
Para 14 Harm reduction
USA, CAN, COL, CHN suggested alternative wordings to harm reduction
Para 41: Linking drug trafficking, corruption and other forms of organized crime
Hardly any other para was mentioned more often; While seven countries suggested deletion of this para, twelve other supported it.
Next steps
The Chair has published the draft text with track changes as established during the meeting. (ECAD has it in the Head Office) The next informal meeting is Tuesday 12 November. The next intersessional meeting will be on 18 and 19 November. The Chair is pushing for a final text at the end of November, but it seems that delegations were not too excited about the speed of the proceedings.