Mr President,

Harm Reduction International and co-signatories, welcome the reports of the Expert Mechanism, which highlights that racial discrimination in drug policy is not accidental. It is rooted in colonial legacies, the racialisation of substances and drug use and the global expansion of prohibitionism and militarisation.

The so-called “war on drugs” has failed to deliver sustained reductions in drug markets or consumption. Instead, it has fuelled excessive use of force, arbitrary detention, overcrowded prisons, death sentences and executions, and barriers to healthcare and social services, with particularly severe impacts on marginalised communities. Across regions, Africans and people of African descent, particularly women, are disproportionately stopped, searched, arrested, detained and imprisoned. They are also disproportionately sentenced and executed for drug-related offences.

Punitive drug control is not inevitable, but a policy choice. States must advance harm reduction and alternatives to incarceration, while reviewing and reforming policies and laws that perpetuates racial discrimination, stigma and inequality.

We call on States to urgently divest from punitive approaches to drug control and invest in social justice, including by decriminalising drug use and possession for personal use, and implementing comprehensive, voluntary and non-discriminatory harm reduction services.

We call for the end of militarisation, abolish mandatory minimum sentences and the death penalty, and provide legal aid and effective remedies.

We finally call on the Council to adopt a new resolution on drug policy.

Thank you.

Co-signatories:

• Capital Punishment Justice Project
• Elementa
• Dejusticia
• International Drug Policy Consortium
• International Network of People who use Drugs
• Parliamentarians for Global Action
• World Coalition Against the Death Penalty