FDS Insight Magazine Nov - Dec 2022

16 of health for people who use drugs. Denial of access to harm reduction, including in detention settings, violates the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In her May 2022 report on human rights and HIV, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, noted the barriers to harm reduction access created by the criminalisation, stigmatisation and marginalisation of people who use drugs. The report highlights the human rights violations faced by women and trans people who use drugs; notably physical and sexual violence, which exacerbate both groups’ vulnerability to HIV. This theme was also addressed by 18 human rights and harm reduction organisations in a joint statement to the 50th Session of the Human Rights Council (2022), which highlighted the disproportionate impact of the COVID- 19 pandemic and government responses on the rights of marginalised and criminalised populations, including people who use drugs, people who sell sex and LGBTQI+ people. In June 2022, UN human rights experts called for an end to the ‘war on drugs’, stating: ‘Data and experience accumulated by UN experts have shown that the ‘war on drugs’ undermines health and social wellbeing and wastes public resources while failing to eradicate the demand for illegal drugs and the illegal drug market.’ The statement also emphasised the responsibility of the UN system, the international community and individual UN member states to reverse the devastation. Human rights violations continue to be committed worldwide in the name of drug control. These include, among many others, the denial of access to harm reduction services, including through the criminalisation of drug paraphernalia (such as needles and pipes), the prohibition of OAT (for example, in Russia), and discrimination against people who use drugs in the provision of HIV and viral hepatitis care. As of 2021, 35 countries retained the death penalty for drug offences. At least 131 people were executed for drug offences in 2021. Due to a lack of transparency, and even censorship, this figure is likely to represent only a fraction of all drug-related executions. There was an 11% increase in known death sentences for drug offences from 2020 to 2021, with at least 237 death sentences handed down in 16 countries. Roughly 10% of all drug-related death sentences confirmed in 2021 were handed to foreign nationals, raising significant fair trial and human rights concerns. Despite the progress towards abolishing the death penalty for drug offences that some countries have made (such as in Malaysia), it remains a tool of drug control in many others. Indeed, in some countries, there are ongoing national-level discussions to reinstate or introduce the death penalty for drug offences (such as in the Philippines and Tonga.