By Samantha Paz / May 6, 2016

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2016-05-06 | Samantha Paz, Assistant Vice President of Public Policy & Communications, BOOM!Health, AIDS United

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, or more simply: UNGASS, officially took place April 19-21, 2016 in New York City. For harm reduction, civil, and human rights organizations, UNGASS included more than six weeks of side events, rallies, protests, and strategy sessions in addition to the formal proceedings.

Like many of our partners, BOOM!Health doesn’t have an international presence, and as an agency without consultative status, we participated as civil society observers during the official proceedings. That inexperience is why we, like many of our colleagues, were shocked when the UNGASS Consensus was adopted during the first session, on the first day of the special session.

Watching as the consensus was adopted, I struggled to comprehend how a document, which takes great pains to use every known euphemism for harm reduction, could be so quickly and readily approved without more delegates taking the opportunity to decry the practice of uplifting “evidence-based public health solutions” while refusing to acknowledge by name the framework that has given rise to those highly-touted, evidence-based solutions, namely harm reduction.

In addition to the official programming which included General Assembly and roundtable discussions, there were dozens of side events organized by civil society, national, and city governments. One of the side events I had the opportunity to attend was “A call for leadership: HIV, human rights and harm reduction.” Chaired by Harm Reduction International, the panel was of particular interest to me because of the variety of experiences it conveyed. During the event, the moderator joked it might be the most co-sponsored panel in history, with thirteen different sponsors and contributors.

It was during this panel that I first heard the suggestion that the absence of the words “harm reduction” in the consensus document was not something we should be disappointed by. One of the panelists firmly believed that the inclusion of the interventions, primarily syringe access and overdose reversal treatment, was enough of a victory and that we shouldn’t expect countries which only recently adopted a public health mindset, to embrace harm reduction as unequivocally as Germany or the Netherlands.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Not formally recognizing the harm reduction framework as the origin of many of the life-saving, evidence-based public health solutions agreed upon in the UNGASS Consensus is dangerous; it’s the drug-policy equivalent of the US military’s former “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Embracing harm reduction in a piecemeal fashion throws a shadow over the progress we’ve achieved in reducing HIV and viral hepatitis transmission and allows stigma and human rights violations to persist.

Recognizing harm reduction in the consensus document could have been a significant step towards holding the international community accountable. If we are collectively dedicated to reducing harm, that commitment would require a moratorium on drug-related executions and incarcerations, both of which have been proven ineffective deterrents to crime and cause excessive personal harm.

If we were considering any other topic, the choice would seem obvious. It’s unconscionable to incarcerate, or worse, execute someone for a health condition. Allowing countries to strip away the human rights foundation of harm reduction from the clinical interventions and strategies is a scheme to continue dehumanizing drug users and is antithetical to harm reduction practice.

At a side event hosted by the United States, a spokesperson from the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy noted that “science alone has never been sufficient to shape public policy.” His comment, which followed a decisive argument against the incarceration of drug users from Dr. Nora Volkow, plagues me. It is our duty to ensure the science isn’t ignored, that human rights aren’t excised from evidence-based practices, and that this discussion doesn’t end with UNGASS.