Drugs and Human Rights

The Global Rights Booklets are a new initiative with which we open 2022, the twentieth year of the publications of our annual Global Rights Report. They are a slim set of monothematic volumes on the important and intertwined themes that are dealt with in our research and analyses, that prove to be current and relevant events, and that anticipate the contents of the end of year Report. This second Booklet deals with drug-related issues. This is a global question, given that more than 270 million people in the world use illegal drugs, according to the statistics from the United Nations. It is a topic that calls into play not only national and international policies but in a very evident and solid way, also human rights. Of the 12 million people everyday who find themselves in prison, one-fifth, 2 and a half million people, are detained for drug offences. The majority of these people are there for minor crimes and around 500,000 for personal use of drugs only. The global drug policies have been seen to be very powerful means for the production of violations of human rights everywhere: of a large part of the death sentences handed down, the extrajudicial killings, the mass incarcerations, the negation of health and welfare rights, gender discrimination and the rights of producer populations. This book reveals and documents the shocking map of human rights violations that happen on the pretext of drugs – first of all the right to life, to justice and to health. It identifies battles and progress made, denounces impunity and gives voice to the protagonists in a fight that regards all of us, in every corner of the world.