International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies - March 23, 2007

[The presentation began with introductory remarks addressed to the members of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies present in the Think Tank concerning her role with an IFRC working group whose main aim is to set out the scope of the International Federation's substance abuse activities or approaches to date, including harm reduction].

I am here today with two main objectives. The first is to listen attentively to your experience and observations some of which will relate to the recommendations from the previous meeting held here in Rome in December 2005 with its theme " Bridging the gap between public health and drug policy".

The second is to share with you the progress of the Working Group to date and to invite your comment and advice.

But to begin at the beginning.

It is important to acknowledge the work done in our Red Cross and Red Crescent meetings on this important subject, beginning with that vital 1919 period when, having clarified what the Red Cross role is in wartime, our forefathers (and they were mostly men) considered what the role should be in peacetime.

There are two elements of their thinking which have special significance for us today.

The first was the determination by Henry Dunant that, just as he had put together a skilled team of volunteers standing ready to assist with the victims of war, so we should have similar teams to deal with natural disasters in which he included epidemics.

The second was the advice given by the Cannes Medical Conference at the invitation of the Committee of Red Cross Societies that we should "endeavour to spread the light of science and the warmth of human sympathy into every corner of the world".

Let me turn briefly to the seven recommendations some of you made at the previous Rome High Level meeting, in 2005.

Four of these recommendations specifically link drug use with the epidemic, indeed the pandemic, of HIV.

You committed your National Societies to:

- advocate a comprehensive public health, harm reduction and humanitarian approach,

- develop cooperation within this approach with your peers including drug users and people living with HIV/AIDS,

- implement information, communication and life skill development programmes with a special emphasis on people who are especially vulnerable to harm such as prisoners and so-called "mobile" populations, and finally

- recognize the important contribution that can be made by peer groups, drug users and people living with HIV/AIDS.

I shall be extremely interested to hear of your progress, your successes and indeed your failures, if any, because sometimes we learn more from what did not work than we can from apparent successes.

In all of this, we shall be listening very carefully for the evidence either one way or the other not only because of that commitment to "spreading the light of science" of our forefathers but also because we in Red Cross Red Crescent are essentially action- oriented people.

Just last month I saw an absolutely wonderful quote from Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He said his job was to do everything in his power to help the people who needed protection. "[We] are about action", he said, " Our responsibility is to assist and protect people on a needs-based non-discriminatory basis. There are enough people making judgments".

Nowhere is this more true in considering illicit drugs, drugs that is which are not part of the controlled framework of substances used for therapeutic purposes.

There are three main groups of people involved

- the people who supply the drugs, both those that are plant-based and those that are synthetic,

- the people who traffic in the drugs, who get them from one place to another,

- the people who use these substances for whatever reason.

Only some of these people will go to become addicted to the substance in question, to become, in Red Cross Red Crescent terms, vulnerable people.

Many of them will use these drugs intravenously. Many of them will use them in very dangerous circumstances - underground, sharing the scarce supply of equipment, trading themselves as well as stolen goods to raise the money to buy the substance at greatly inflated prices.

Tragically many will also contract blood-borne infections, if not HIV, then hepatitis and other septicaemia-causing organisms.

Even more tragically, they will pass on this infection to their wives and children, thus serving as a reservoir for community infection on a massive scale.

Last week, Christopher Lamb and I represented the IFRC at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs. This body was established by the Economic and Social Council in 1945 as the central policy-making body within the UN system dealing with drug-related matters.

It analyses the world drug situation and develops proposals to strengthen the international drug control system to combat the world drug problem.

The meeting was well attended by Member States. More than 100 countries sent delegations and the majority of these reported.

Almost all of the reports dealt with the first two groups of people - the drug manufacturers and the drug traffickers.

We were virtually alone in our concern for people who have become addicted to these dangerous substances, people who live at the margins of society, people our IFRC President, Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro Rivero, described as " people in need of care and compassion and real alternatives. Instead they routinely face harassment, stigmatization, violence and social exclusion".

And importantly, given the firm commitment of our International Federation to respond to the needs of people caught up in the HIV pandemic, he commented that "The stigma attached to drug use is causing further marginalization of this very vulnerable group and is directly impeding efforts to prevent the spread of HIV".

A major feature of the UN meeting was the planning for marking the tenth anniversary of the 1998 Special Session of the UN General Assembly.

The main objectives of that session were to eliminate or significantly reduce the illicit cultivation of coca, cannabis and the opium poppy as well as the illicit manufacture and trafficking of synthetic drugs, and to achieve significant and measurable results in the field of drug demand reduction by the year 2008, next year.

Now the time has come to evaluate progress and to reflect on what measures have lead to positive outcomes and where greater effort is needed.

The UN Commission is also encouraging organizations such as ours to reflect on our achievements and to report our progress.

I believe that this is a really good opportunity for us to fulfil that "unique auxiliary role" we have with our Governments, the role referred to in the fifth recommendation from the previous high level meeting and a role which will be a major feature of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Conference in Geneva in November.

Our Working Group will be recommending that all National Societies should be asked to provide details on their work, especially giving details of their current " on-the ground" "hands-on" experience in the care of people with drug addictions, to tell us what works and what does not in their various cultural and other contexts.

So that is where you all come in. You are hearing this request first ahead of the recommendation even being put before the Health and Community Services Commission.

As I said at the outset, I shall be listening very carefully to your observations and experiences.

The careful documenting of your experience could be a most significant contribution to the work of the world as it seeks to balance the so-called "war against drugs" with the recognition that Governments and communities need to treat drug users in a humane way, respecting them as people with rights and needs.

Living up to that formidable list of Fundamental Principles is not easy.

Keeping our focus on humanity and universality is essential.

I thank you and I look forward to working with you to find ways of working with vulnerable people to reduce the harm associated with the use and abuse of illicit narcotic and psychotropic drugs.
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