 Sunday 17 May 2009
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) has mixed feelings about the speech of President Evo Morales at the high level UN meeting in Vienna on March 11 this year in which he announced that Bolivia would start the process to remove
the coca leaf from the 1961 Single Convention as well as the suspension
of the paragraphs of that convention that prohibit the traditional
chewing of coca leaf. Read our reply.
Although the HCLU recognizes the brave step of Morales to defend the cultural heritage of the Andean in the lion’s den of the UN drug control regime, their final assessment is that this is a very shortsighted attitude, because it does not question the UN drug conventions as a whole.
HCLU also reproaches Morales to not support those Latin American politicians who have called for a general reform of drug policies, based on the principled of harm reduction, instead of only fighting the battle for reclassifying coca leaf.
Frankly, we think the comments of HCLU are the ones that are short sighted, rather than Morales’ remarks in his speech. First of all, it is not true that Bolivia does not support general reform of UN drug control policies.
In fact, Bolivia was the only Latin American country that supported the "interpretative statement" in which 26 countries voiced their disappointment that harm reduction strategies were not acknowledged by the majority of delegations. No other Latin American country dared to support that statement, although some – such as Brazil and Uruguay – did support harm reduction in their national statements.
Second, the mere fact that Bolivia is asking for a revision of the Single Convention will question the validity and consistency of the UN drug conventions. Since their approval, no other country has had the courage to question any aspect of the conventions.
We think that to reproach Bolivia not to take on the whole drug control system but only one aspect is naive and counterproductive. The country is under immense pressure of the UN drug control system and much more powerful nations such as the United States to abstain from their request – and the position of the HCLU does not help to garner support for their brave step.
The implicit reprimand that Morales is selfishly pursuing his goals by expecting activists and governments representatives to support his case while he declines to get involved in the discussion on other plants or substances, is putting the argument upside down.
As a coca farmer his primary concern is to improve the situation of his constituency. The plight of coca farmers does not allow Morales to wait until the momentum is there to reform the entire UN drug control system. It is not up to Bolivia to lead the reform of international drug policies on its own. Other countries, those of the European Union for instance, are in a much less vulnerable position to do so. Bolivia does its part.
So far, the drug policy reform movement has not succeeded to put much of a dent in the system. To scold Bolivia for their courage to take on that system, while the rest of world tacitly keeps on accepting an outdated and – in the case of coca – racist policy, or hides behind a maximalist position that the only way forward is to reject the system as a whole, we consider to be rather short sighted.
According to the HCLU, Morales cannot do anything right: he is not advocating an overhaul of the conventions and is – incorrectly – accused of not supporting harm reduction. However, harm reduction also does not aim to overhaul the conventions: it is a strategy to save the lives of problematic drug users within the current international drug control system, accepting the fact that the system while not change in the short term.
In other words, when consumers are concerned it is allowed to take action and not to wait until the system is changed, but when producers are concerned they are not allowed to do anything until the whole system has fallen apart. That is putting the burden of drug policy reform on the shoulders of those with the least capacity to carry it.
Such a position is symptomatic of the “all or nothing” approach of many drug reform organisations that has led to an impasse in the debate and has done little to nothing to change and improve international drug policy. It does little to reduce the plight of farmers involved in the illicit cultivation of drug crops, nor does it help much to improve the position of consumers.
Of course, the HCLU is entitled to voice its opinions, even if they are wide of the mark, but we sincerely hope that they will revise their position and put their full support behind the initiative of Morales. Reclassifying coca and removing the prohibition of traditional chewing of coca leaf might be a small step, but could result in giant leap forward to reform the conventions and the UN drug control system.
Tom Blickman and Pien Metaal
Transnational Institute
Read the reply of the HCLU here
|
