Event
Event: Gender, Drugs, and Criminal Justice: navigating human rights challenges
Side event at the margins of the 30th CCPCJ intersessional meeting, organised by: International Drug Policy Consortium, Penal Reform International, Washington Office on Latin America.
The Kyoto Declaration, adopted at the 14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in March 2021, places a strong emphasis on protecting the rights of women within the criminal justice system (OP35, OP43), including with provisions on detention conditions and on measures to address overcrowding in detention facilities with the use of alternatives to detention and custodial sentences (OP36).
Worldwide, over a third of incarcerated women are in prison for drug offences. This proportion rises to 50 and even 80% in several Latin American and Asian countries. Although more men are incarcerated for drug offences globally, available research in those two regions show the differentiated and disproportionate impacts of drug control on women. Addressing the over-incarceration of women worldwide therefore requires urgent reforms of drug policies (OP85), in line with the UN System Common Positions on incarceration and on drug-related matters and the 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document.
This side event explored the gendered impacts of drug control and the carceral system on women’s human rights, and offered some key recommendations for the way forward.
Programme
H.E. Luis Javier Campuzano Piña, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the International Organizations in Vienna
Introductory remarks
Miriam Estrada-Castillo, UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Presenting the WGAD Deliberation on women and deprivation of liberty
Gloria Lai, International Drug Policy Consortium
Setting the scene on gender and drug policy, with data from the Global Drug Polciy Index.
Parina Subba Limbu, Dristi Nepal
Reflecting on drug control, poverty, and their impact on women who use drugs
Tríona Lenihan, Penal Reform International
Key recommendations from the PRI/IDPC ‘10-point plan: Gender-sensitive drug policies for women’
Q&A
Moderated by Coletta Youngers, Washington Office on Latin America
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