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DAILY UPDATE
DAY FOUR
Thursday 23 April 2009
Even in countries with progressive harm
reduction policies young people were still not
being involved in policy and programme
development, Youth R.I.S.E coordinator Caitlin
Padgett told delegates in yesterday’s
Young
people, drugs and harm reduction
session.
Young people were being criminalised for their
drug use, she said, ending up in correction facilities
and therefore at serious risk. Iulia-Veronica Broasca,
project manager of the Romanian Association
Against Aids, said her organisation had been
running pilot projects in prisons, including two youth
penitentiaries. They had offered free condoms and
peer education but had come up against strong
resistance from prison personnel. The institutions
were extremely high risk environments where
syringes and condoms were not allowed – ‘minor
prisons are a death sentence for minors,’ she said.
However the Convention on the Rights of the
Child – the most widely ratified of all human rights
documents – could help provide a framework, said
Ms Padgett. The guiding principles of the
convention could help make the argument for
harm reduction for young people, she said. These
included non-discrimination, the right to life,
survival and development, the right to be heard
and having their views taken into account.
‘Sometimes it’s uncomfortable,’ she said.
‘People don’t want to think about these issues. In
some countries, for example in Eastern Europe, the
average age for people to start injecting is 15 or 16
but they can’t access services until they’re 18.’ A
coordinated response that included the UN family
was essential, she said, so that people did not have
to worry about providing services in case their
funding was halted or they were accused of
enabling drug use. She called for strong leadership
at high level to change legislation to allow young
people the services they desperately needed.
‘There’s resistance even within the harm
reduction movement,’ she said. ‘But the reality is
that without harm reduction services young
people are dying.’
Young people being ignored
HIGHLIGHTS
Thursday 23 April
Major Session:
Drinking patterns in Asia
This session will bring together research
on drinking patterns in four Asian
countries – China, Korea, the Philippines,
and Thailand. It will explore how drinking
patterns are measured, and how harm
reduction can be applied.
Queens Park 1 (2nd Floor)
09:00 – 10:30
Major Session:
Reflections from Vienna
The International Drug Policy
Consortium (IDPC) has organised this
session to give feedback from the UN
High Level Segment on Drug Control
which took place in Vienna last month.
The session will include presentations
from IDPC and IHRA followed by a
panel discussion on the way forward for
international drug policy advocacy.
Queens Park 1 (2nd Floor)
11:00 – 12:30
Plenary Session:
The last plenary session this year will be
on methamphetamine, and will feature
four of the best presentations on harm
reduction from the Global Methamphet-
amine Conference in Prague last year.
Queens Park 1&2 (2nd Floor)
13:30 – 15:00
Closing Session:
To close the conference, and celebrate
another successful and engaging event,
we would invite all delegates to attend
this final session, which will feature a
keynote address from Craig McClure –
the Executive Director of the International
AIDS Society. The session will also
include the conference rapporteur’s
presentation, the 2009 Film Festival
Award, the presentation of the 2009
Bonnie Devlin Memorial Scholarship, and
a handover to Harm Reduction 2010.
Queens Park 1&2 (2nd Floor)
15:15 – 16:30
sponsors of the daily update
‘The way to get these kids off drugs is to give them
inspiration,’ said Peanut of the Kormix collective, a
UNICEF funded project which aims to reduce drug
related harm in Cambodia through hip hop. The project
serves around 150 young people, the majority of whom
have stopped using drugs as a result, he told delegates.