Name: Aram Barra
Age:27
Country: Mexico
Aram
Barra, an International Studies Bachelor who is currently serving as Projects Director
at Espolea an organization by and for young people working in Latin America and
as Board Member of Youth RISE, a global network of young people working on harm
reduction shares his idea with us on Young people who use drugs and their meaningful
participation in the UN system
A bit
over one year ago, during the launch of the 2011 Word Drug Report at the UN
Headquarters in New York, Ban Ki-moon said: “Drug-dependent people should not
be treated with discrimination; they should be treated by medical experts and
counsellors. Drug addiction is a disease, not a crime”. Nevertheless, countries
around the world continue to criminalize people who use drugs. Some countries
even elevate risks to health to the point of applying death penalty punishments
for holding scarce grams of any illegal drug. It doesn't matter how much we
ignore the fact that it happens, wide violations of human rights of people who
use drugs continues to be a reality.
The
issue is enormous and complex, and thus there’s no easy solution. However, for
the past couple of years an increasing number of organizations and groups of
young people working at different levels have attempted to change the status
quo. If 60 years of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and 40 years of a
war on drugs have not impeded young people to experiment and use drugs, one can
only question: Are we doing something wrong? If current policies have only
served to deter young people from accessing health services, counseling and
life-saving harm reduction and overdose prevention programs, are we indeed
listening to the words of the UN Secretary General? Are our drug policies
really treating “drug addiction” as “a disease,
not a crime”?
Following
the innovative introduction of young people's meaningful participation in the
debates, decisions and programs that affect our lives -- led by UNAIDS and more
recently the United Nation Population Fund -- the UN agency charged with drug control, UN Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC), decided to create a so-called 'Youth Initiative'. The
process is and continues to be opaque to say the least. A group of young people
from around the world were flown into Vienna, Austria, to partake in the annual
meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in March 2012.
As is so
common in drug policy, rather than drawing on a diversity of views for an honest
debate, engaged stakeholders were fractured to work at cross-purposes. Little
did it matter to the 'Youth Initiative' of UNODC that other networks, organizations
and young people have in fact worked to open up spaces to participate in the
meeting for young people for several years. Young people who have been active
in these fora have followed debates closely, reported on annual outcomes and
are in direct communication with their ambassadors to better understand the
impacts that current drug policies have on young people. Nevertheless, existing
youth groups were never included in the new initiative. In fact they were
blocked-out of "closed-door meetings" held at the annual Commission.
The Initiative came out of these meetings with a document titled, 'Youth
Discussion Guide: Thematic Overviews, Activities, Links' that states that
"people who use drugs are not able to be responsible persons in their
communities or become successful mentors to young people." This suggests
that there is nothing we can learn from those young people that have experienced the impacts of drug policies
first-hand.
During
that CND meeting, a young person was offered to speak at the forum for the
first time in history. Countries and UNODC staff were willing, for once, to
listen to a young person's voice. The blog reporting on it bluntly called his
speech "Youth from all over the world make their statement at the 55th
Commission on Narcotic Drugs" even though, as mentioned before, the whole
process has been all but representative of 'youth from all around the world'.
The
Initiative was recently given a second opportunity to speak, this time before
the Thematic Debate on "Drugs and Crime as a Threat to Development"
at the General Assembly last June. There, the young speaker assured "Most
of our families are broken families, and most of the youth are orphans, which
is why drug abuse has increased". The speaker added, "Young people
are ignorant. Ignorance has also permitted this epidemic to spread and has
limited our vision to be disseminated under the guidance of ideology."
Apart
from the evident lack of understanding of what representation and meaningful participation
means to this whole process, one can only
wonder: How many decisions are made in a similar fashion? How much
longer do most affected and at risk
youth need to wait to have a say on the
decisions that affect our lives? Can stigmatizing discourse -- even if said by
a young person -- really be the path forward
to responding to the real needs of young people who use drugs?
As
Simone Weil once said, "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness
simply mean being able to say, What are you going through?" If the ‘Youth
Initiative’, as a project of the UN family, really stands for the ideals of
defending human rights and the well-being of people all around the world, it
would, one would assume, at least listen to the voices of those who it claims
to represent. We hope to be able to contribute to this in the near future in an
organized manner. But there are things to do as individuals as well. If we really
care for our neighbors, we could start by questioning our current policies and
wonder how we can better them.
In this
edition of ’10 days of activism’ I want to ask you to think about your country’s
drug policy. I want to invite you to reflect on their impacts and ask those
who are most affected by them, how can
we better them? Whatever answer you come up with should attempt to stay away
from paternalistic and vacuous action. After all, meaningful participation
-regardless of your use of drugs- is based on the right we all have to decide
how we want to live our lives and the principles of human rights.
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