In a speech delivered today to both the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the Crime Commission, Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime announced the creation of a new senior advisory team on human rights within UNODC.
According to Mr Fedotov, the group is designed to ensure that “human rights are fully integrated into all our policies and programme design”.
This is far more complicated than it sounds. But it is an important development, and follows a recently adopted, but not yet widely distributed, ‘Guidance Note’ on human rights sent from UNODC HQ to all staff. The note discusses the many human rights risks that may accompany UNODC’s work on drugs, terrorism and organised crime and the ways in which staff can respond.
It includes the development of a human rights planning tool to ensure that policies and programmes integrate human rights from the start and include them as part of evaluations. It is something Harm Reduction International has been calling for since 2008.
Harm Reduction International has documented the involvement of UNODC supported and sponsored programmes in the application of the death penalty and executions for drug offences
Human Rights Watch has recently reported on the Office’s involvement with drug detention centres in Viet Nam.
In light of these and other issues, the creation of a senior management team within UNODC for human rights is an important step in mainstreaming rights-based approaches throughout the Office and for increased accountability.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and how the advisory group is put together. In particular, we have four main questions:
- Will UNODC develop specific guidance on the interpretation of the in international drug conventions in line with human rights law?
- Is it now time for international guidelines on human rights while ‘countering the world drug problem’?
- Will the deliberations of the senior management group be transparent?
- How will civil society work with the new group?
