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AT TODAY’S FILM FESTIVAL
Children of Leningradsky:
Up to 4m children are homeless in post-
Soviet Russia, sleeping on streets and
railways, in stairways, bins and tunnels,
and on hot water pipes to protect
themselves from the harsh winter. They
sniff glue to curb hunger and escape from
world around them. A heartbreaking film
from Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celinski.
This is my destiny:
Opium has destroyed Khoshan’s life. Her
family’s land has been sold to pay for her
and her husband’s addiction, they have
been ostracised by their community and
their baby has been addicted from birth.
Lucy Gordon and Bahareh Hosseini film
three people struggling with addiction in
different parts of Afghanistan.
Ibogaine – rite of passage:
Ben De Loenen’s documentary about the
controversial plant extract. Its anti-
addictive properties were discovered by
American Howard Lotsof, who was
addicted to heroin. It became illegal in the
US and pharmaceutical companies showed
no interest in it – the film asks why.
The MTV International Drugs and Harm
Reduction Film Festival 2011 runs from
12.30–18.00 in the cinema, auditorium
level.
Monday 4 April 2011 – DAY ONE –
Daily Update
– 5
This morning’s major sessions include
Jude Byrne
from the International
Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD). She tells
The Daily Update
how
INPUD has given drug users a seat at the negotiating table.
FOR MANY YEARS THE DRUG USER MOVEMENT
and drug users remained the
outsiders of the harm reduction movement. There have been individuals who have seen beyond
our ‘ascribed deviance’ and pushed hard to have us included in the development and
implementation of the harm reduction philosophy – but it was slim pickings indeed!
For over 15 years the occasional ‘charismatic junkie’ was brought out at various events to
give the sense that drug users were welcomed and included – and by some, they truly were. But
these individual drug users had to try and translate so many different drug users’ lives into a
meaningful discourse for the other people who make up the harm reduction movement –
doctors, researchers, nurses, drug and alcohol workers. It was a lonely and difficult place.
It wasn’t until 2007, when IHRA’s Harm Reduction and Human Rights Monitoring and Policy
Analysis Programme came into being, that we finally felt that perhaps we did have a seat at the
table. For until our essential humanity was acknowledged, and the implied deviance of drug
users no longer the dominant theory, everything else that was done in the name of harm
reduction was playing around the edges.
Since then INPUD as an organisation has been on a massive learning curve, with a brief as
varied and as diverse as our community. We have received funds from organisations as
diverse as the Department for International Development (DFID), UNAIDS and Open Society
Institute (OSI). Our funding has barely been sufficient at times and we have had to work with
only volunteers, but the support from the staff of those funding organisations and other
international fora has been extraordinarily positive and embracing. They have gone out of their
way to make us feel involved and to ensure we are asked onto committees where our issues
are being discussed.
At times we now have a rather more palatable dilemma – a feast of opportunities, which
sometimes means we do not have the resources or trained members to keep up with the
requests. INPUD currently has representatives on a variety of committees including WHO and
UNODC Effective Treatment Programme and UNODC TreatNet Programme, World AIDS
Campaign Global Steering Committee, UN General Assembly 2001 Comprehensive AIDS
Review, WHO Viral Hepatitis Guidelines, UN Gender Committee, WHO Stop TB Programme,
and The UN Global Commission on HIV and the Law. We have also developed and passed our
constitution, and written our strategic plan.
INPUD believes, with the continued funding and support from the international community,
we will have the opportunity to train representatives and develop our resources so we can
have real and meaningful involvement in all aspects of the harm reduction agenda – and that
can only be of benefit.
From famine to feast
Jude Byrne:
‘Everything else
that was done in the name of
harm reduction was playing
around the edges.’ She
received one of the two
International Rolleston
Awards at the opening
session. The other went to
Richard Needle, who was
unable to attend.