Research Analyst at European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), Celine Burke, while speaking at the 65th Session of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna highlighted the importance of gender-sensitive drug policies as a crucial tool to counter gender-based discrimination and violence in drug control.

“People who use drugs continue to be discriminated, stigmatized, incarcerated and killed,” she said adding, “We know that women, in particular, are disproportionately affected by the harsh penalties for minor drug-related offences in many countries around the world that continue to take punitive approaches. Nonetheless, more gender-aggregated data is needed to design evidence-based interventions that promote harm reduction, sustainable development and peacebuilding.”

Speaking on Inter-Agency Cooperation and Coordination of Efforts in Addressing and Countering the World Drug Problem, Burke pointed out the reluctance of Member States to collect gender-sensitive data and said that it presents a major impediment to a more nuanced understanding of gendered dynamics in the drug economy.

“The UNODC gender strategy states that “Gender equality and the empowerment of women are integral parts […] in making the world safer from drugs, crime and terrorism”. As conflict fuels the drug trade as well as gender-based violence, these discussions necessarily belong together,” she stated in her address.

Burke noted that bodies like the UNODC have a normative function and can drive policy change on the national and regional levels. Improved inter-agency cooperation is urgently needed in order to achieve these goals, she remarked.

Touching upon the adoption of the UN System Common Position on drugs in November 2018, she said that the adopted system presents a strong commitment to strengthened cooperation in order to promote evidence- and human-rights based drug policies within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

“Drugs are more than a threat to national security. Drugs are a health issue, a human-rights issue, a development issue and an environmental issue. We need to change not only the way we debate about drugs but also the way we position them in the international framework and address the global challenges they pose. In this regard, a commitment to gender mainstreaming and gender sensitivity is not only about adding gender topics to the discussion, but about reflecting how policies differently impact marginalized groups,” she said.

The EFSAS research analyst said, Resolution 59/5 of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) “requests the [UNODC] to continue to mainstream a gender perspective in all its practices, policies and programmes related to the world drug problem”, and the inclusion of human rights and gender as a pillar of drug control has been praised as a historic broadening of the drug control system. Burke stressed that the time to act upon these important commitments is now.

The UNODC as the leading entity in this endeavour must honour the important commitments made at the 2016 UNGASS and the UN System Common Position on drug policy by promoting drug-related issues in all UN forums to strengthen system-wide coherence and drug policies grounded in human rights and social justice that take lived realities as well as gendered impacts into account, Burke added.