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A harm reduction approach to injecting drug use -
Including needle and syringe exchange programs
and opioid substitution therapy -
is endorsed and promoted by UNAIDS and WHO in
numerous best practice guideleines and policy documents.
Although the UN office on Drugs and Crime also supports harm reduction
in various ways, the heads of the office still have problems with the use of this term.
- Gentleman at the back there, yes!
Can you clarify UNODC’s position on harm reduction?
Because we see that there is a kind of disagreement between UNAIDS and UNODC on this issue.
As far as harm reduction is concerned, you may correct me, but I am not aware
of any resolution of the CND in favor of harm reduction.
So we do not have... We are not specifically mandated by our member states,
our stakeholders to promote harm reduction.
Mr. Fedotov is in fact on record saying ‘well, we have no resolution on harm reduction,
therefore I don’t take a position on it’. That’s nonsense.
If the UNODC needed a CND resolution for everything it wants to say,
well that would be a pretty stunted conversation, let’s face it.
It’s a part of the Secretariat, it doesn’t need to be.. to have language
from the UN to say what needs to be done based on evidence and human rights.
UNODC are unique in the UN family for not being able to say the words ‘harm reduction’
I think it’s a term which was widely used in WHO, in UNAIDS, in the Global Fund, and many other organizations,
so UNODC I think has a particularly sensitive issue around it and that’s a matter for them.
And it is true that there has never been a CND resolution which deals with harm reduction as such,
but we do say…you know there’s a euphemism for it,
which is ‘reducing the negative health and social consequences of drug use.'
So you know, that’s what we refer to when we say harm reduction.
So I think Mr. Fedotov knows well I’m sure what we mean when we say harm reduction.
UNODC has supported harm reduction activities and harm reduction itself for a very long time.
There might not be a resolution that’s gone through CND that contains the word ‘harm reduction,'
because we had a big discussion about that a few years ago with regard to the political declaration,
and harm reduction didn’t make it in. But in terms of the work
that UNODC does, it contains a lot of harm reduction.
We know that the most effective measures for addressing *** transmission amongst injecting drug users
are needle and syringe exchange and OST, and the other interventions
recommended by the UNODC, WHO and UNAIDS.
So this extreme ambiguity in the leadership of UNODC is something that's very problematic,
and it's especially problematic, given that they are cosponsors for *** injecting drug use with UNAIDS,
they have a responsibility to promoting science-based human rights compliant interventions
to halt the *** epidemic among injecting drug users.
You can read more about international support for harm reduction in this document.
Subtitles: Lili Török