1/4 UNGASS 2016 Preparations - The Concept
- Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy
- Apr 1, 2016
- 14 min read
As explained by Transform policy analyst Steve Rolles (2015a), “Special Sessions of the General Assembly are called to review and debate a specific issue – in this case the so-called “world drug problem.”
UNGASS 2016 is supposed to be the opportunity - principally for U.N. member states, but also for U.N. agencies and civil society organizations - to discuss, review, exchange, and enact a plan of action for the way the world is currently handling the concept of illicit drugs. Indeed, to date, “the international drug control regime is facing the most profound challenge of its existence.” (IDPC, 2015a) Notwithstanding the vast number of populations suffering from the direct consequences of the current International Drug Control Regime (IDCR) - in Southeast Asia but also elsewhere - numerous civil society organizations and some U.N. member states have pinned considerable hopes towards reform of the current prohibitionist system and believe “that meaningful, long overdue and serious discussions of change” (IDPC, 2014a) could happen within the UNGASS forum.
Member states have for some time now been experimenting with new, alternative responses to the “world drug problem”. State regulation of cannabis and legislative projects aiming at regulating other substances have notably resulted in stretching the bounds of the current legal framework for drug control to its limits. Exposed to a new level of strain, the system is itself implicitly the core subject of the upcoming sessions, while being explicitly left outside of the defined limitations of the forum set by the U.N. member states during the preparatory meetings for the event.
But what is less apparent is the fact that the issue could actually be entirely viewed the other way around. What if UNGASS 2016 represented the last chance for proponents of the prohibition regime to uphold the reality of this very system? In this first article to the four dedicated to the UNGASS 2016 preparations, we will intend to demonstrate that, unless major concessions are made during the upcoming Special Session (and few indicators show that they will be made), unilateral defections by members states from the drug control conventions will continue. In other words, it is the very integrity of the current IDCR - and by extension the robustness of international law - that could be at stake here.
The upcoming Special Session, as-well as past UNGASSs, are all part of the legislative chain which create the current regime by profoundly influencing regional and national policies, as-well as generations to come. Observing such forums can therefore be useful not only to analyze the trajectory of domestic and global illicit drug control policies but also to understand the existence of intrinsic “unintended consequences”, recognized even by the most prominent proponents of the current regime (ECOSOC, 2008).
As the IDPC (2014a) has presented, several key issues are emerging during the UNGASS preparations, such as U.N. institutional drug-control architecture and system-wide coherence; the harmonization of drug control with human rights and 'development' principles; the inconsistencies of the regime in regard to scheduling criteria and procedures; the non-availability of controlled drugs for medical purposes; the legal tensions with regard to traditional uses of certain substances; and most notably the evolving policy practices around cannabis regulation. Alongside a clarification on the concept and the preparation for the current Session, we will intend to review the precedent UNGASS on the topic which took place in 1998 and had particularly meaningful impact on the world as it helped reinforce the core design of the current IDCR.
Perhaps equally important will be the analysis of the different actors which will intervene and influence the UNGASS. As pointed out by the Open Society Foundation, “the simple fact is that if your government wants to introduce drug policy reform, it may have to wrestle with the stewards of the drug control system in the UN.” (OSF, 2015c) As such, scrutinizing the arena where the global framework on drug control is being enacted is crucial for whoever is keen on changing the status quo, both domestically and internationally. As taught to us by Pierre Bourdieu’s (Wacquant, 1992) approach to analyzing policy making, it is vital to observe the players involved during the preparation for a high level meeting such as the upcoming Special Session. Through the sociological practice aimed at examining the actions of so-called elites within political hierarchies, we can analyze the tendency from these powerful actors to recreate a social reality which in turn shapes and constrains the rest of the world (1). Although there has been useful and direct studies of the actions of policy makers (2), which have shown “that methods of interviewing, documentary analysis and participant observation can provide valuable insights into the self-understandings of these policy makers and their actions” (Stevens, 2011), studying the ways international drug policy making has been quite a challenge due to the sensitive, hidden, and polymorphic nature of the issue. In this regard, the current role played by other actors such as - in a limited measure - the non-drug-related U.N. agencies, but most of all, the tremendous work currently being done by civil society organizations to shed light on the upcoming Special Session, remain crucial in order to potentially influence the course of the debate.
The observation is crucial if we remember that back in the early 1990’s during the preparation for the first UNGASS on drugs, statements were made, indicating that current policies could be challenged and that alternatives could be debated instead of simply reaffirming the status quo. Back then these hopes were buried and forgotten. But the contextual situation is far from being the same today. Indeed, from Bolivia’s unprecedented withdrawal in 2011 from the 1961 Single Convention and its subsequent re-adherence in 2013 with a reservation on the coca leaf, to the various initiatives all around the word in regard to drug decriminalization, and the current Uruguyan, Canadian and of several U.S. states’ alternative experiments to regulate their domestic cannabis market, including production and sale; the world is arguably a different place than it was 25 years ago. Civil society has never been so professionally prepared and institutional support from various U.N. agencies has never been so important. As noted by Martin Jelsma (2015), there “are all strong signs that the international drug policy consensus is irreparably broken and that policy practices (…) have started to move beyond the earlier stage of “soft defections” to systemic breaches.”
Although, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged member states to use the UNGASS “to conduct a wide-ranging and open debate that considers all options” (Ki-moon, 2013), in terms of what would be the result of such a Session, and most particularly, what would be the consequences of such a debate for you, readers and people of the world impacted by the current IDCR, nothing could be less clear. Due to the intrinsic nature of multilateral U.N. policy making processes, we may only be able to perceive the consequences of the UNGASS in several years. We would nonetheless intend, in further articles, to partake in a delicate prediction game, in order to try to foresee, on several levels, the prospects, the potential outcomes and an UNGASS-post scenario that could arise.
But perhaps what is also fundamental to understand here is that in these kind of international forums everything is decided in advance and nothing is left to chance. This is why observing and intending to influence the preparatory meetings before the actual Special Session takes place is in fact the most decisive task for stake-holders. Everything will be decided and pre-agreed by the Outcome Document - which we will discuss further down -, where countries lay out their intention, views and legal obligations for the years to come on the subject.
In this regard, some believe that the forum, and the pre-multilateral preparatory meetings will be a once in a life time opportunity to re-adjust an out-of-synchronicity system with reality which U.N. member states could not miss. For others, such as the IPDC (2014a), responding to the 2014 INCB report, UNGASS 2016 “appears increasingly likely to provide a platform for confirming the existing system, and the opportunity for change it represents to be blocked by a bland, consensual validation of business as usual.” Consequently, we will argue here, similarly to what scholar Michael Schechter (1999) asserts that “those with the power today to make the changes needed to confront the problem besetting the world of the twenty-first century are precisely those least likely to make them, even when those changes seem to be their expressly stated goal.”
What remains sure is that tensions within the international community are growing between states defending an orthodox application of the “drug-control cornerstones” and experimenting countries testing the boundaries of the current international legal framework. So what are the results that could potentially come out from the “2016 Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the World Drug Problem” and will they be sufficient to resolve the so-called “world drug problem” ? Let’s try to find out.
What is UNGASS 2016 and what are the rules?
From April 19 to 21, 2016, the different global actors involved in drug control policy will engage within the United Nations forum during the Special Session of the General Assembly (UNGASS). For the third time in history, they will intend to assess the results of the current drug control regime and respond to emerging challenges as many observers find the current design of the drug control model to be inadequate, notably “to confront the worldwide expansion of the illicit production and trade that was triggered as a result of the 1988 Convention.” (Jelsma, 2015) As pointed out by Juan Carlos Garzón (2013), “after four decades of the monologue on the "war on drugs””, the world is confronted with the first real opportunity to “break the taboo” against debating alternatives and new approaches to deal with what is perceived as “the world drug problem”. However, as we will see throughout the articles and the thesis, it is far from meaning that a consensus exists among countries, or even among those calling for change regarding which alternatives should be favored or which way to take in order to achieve them. Rather, the upcoming Special Session should be seen as an opportunity for governments across the world “to have an open debate, either [by] defending the traditional approach, or exploring more effective ways to deal with the issue of the illicit drug trade over the next few decades.” (Garzon, 2013)
UNGASS 2016 is to be placed within a particular context as long-lasting cracks in the consensus have developed since 2012/2013 into wide breaches. Momentum is arguably currently expanding towards drug policy reforms in many heterogeneous parts of the world. Particularly in the Americas, the debate around drug policy has been vibrant and has entered in an unprecedented and pluri-formal dynamic. In 2012, the Cartagena Summit of the Americas gave the Organization of American States (OAS) a mandate to present different alternative scenarios for drug control policy in the region. Driven by decades of internal and globally connected wars fueled by U.S. domestic and foreign policies, countries of the region have initiated the first multilateral institutional step towards drug policy reform. The report and the following debate that the summit produced marked “a historic shift in the region” (Jelsma, 2015), but also had great implications for the rest of the world.
The following June 2013, the OAS General Assembly meeting in Guatemala hence adopted the Antigua Declaration which “encourage[d] the consideration of new approaches to the world drug problem in the Americas based on scientific knowledge and evidence” and declared that “drug policies must have a cross-cutting human rights perspective consistent with the obligations of parties under international law.” (OAS, 2013, para 2 & 10) We can notice here the importance - as is the case in Southeast Asia - of the choice of words that are being used, notably as debates around the concept of a “new approach” came to play an important part of the UNGASS 2016 preparatory meetings.
While analysts such as Steve Rolles (2015), declares that the 2016 UNGASS “has the potential to be a groundbreaking, open debate about the international drug control system” he nonetheless acknowledged that there “is much work to be done to ensure that the UNGASS fulfills that potential – and moves the high-level debate forward.” It is primordial to remember that the current IDCR is held in place by member states, which have the collective sovereign power to mold the global architecture, which is itself governed by the three U.N. conventions on illicit drugs and the U.N. tryptic drug control agencies. Indeed, “for change to happen internationally, it has to be led by member states in these forums.” (Ibid.) As such, before anything else, we need to understand what is the concept of UNGASS and what is the meaning of the phrasing that is attached to it.
The concept
So what is UNGASS? The United Nations General Assembly Special Session is a high level meeting of U.N. member states and related U.N. agencies which gather in order to assess and debate global issues, in our case, the so-called “world-drug problem”. The last Special Session on the topic was held in 1998 and “its focus was the total elimination of drugs from the world.” (OSF, 2015c) Today, the global context has greatly changed and many would like to rethink what is considered as an ineffective and dangerous approach. Indeed, for the first time, there is a “significant dissent” (Ibid.), which appeared all around the world at the local, national and regional levels. In this regard, it could be argued such as the OSF (2015c) do that, UNGASS 2016 is “an unparalleled opportunity to put an end to the horrors of the drug war and instead prioritize health, human rights, and safety.”
The third and upcoming Special Session on the topic of drugs was originally planned to be held in 2019, but a 2012 General Assembly resolution 67/193 (UN General Assembly, 2013) co-sponsored by Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico requested that the Special Session be brought forward to 2016 in order to “conduct deep reflection to analyze all available options, including regulatory or market measures, in order to establish a new paradigm that prevents the flow of resources to organized crime organizations.” (Rolles, 2015a) The fact that this GA resolution was put forward by three Latin American countries which have dearly felt the consequences of the current IDCR is not due to chance. These countries, notwithstanding strong pressures from the U.S. and other prohibitionist-oriented countries, successively put forward the date of the Session, which is quite admirable in regard to the institutional and political barriers that go along such processes, even if what was initially wanted by these countries was a debate on structural reform of the regime.
Probably the biggest challenge which countries will face during the Session is the fact that the flexibility of the conventions is being stretched to their limits as member states pursue domestically their own alternative policies, some arguably going further than what is legally deemed acceptable. Will reforms be sufficient for countries calling for changes, so that all states can agree not to break away from the drug conventions? For any advocates of the current IDCR, this should be the most crucial preoccupation. As IDPC volunteer Nazlee Maghsoudi (2014) pointed out, while “the diverging perspectives between states increase the difficulty of constructive international dialogue” during the Session, it is also arguably this very “fragmented consensus that makes the UNGASS so important.“ (Ibid.) The forum could also allow for new perspectives to be heard from members states which do not possess permanent representation in Vienna (around 1/3 of the 193 U.N. members), or that do not hold a seat as full member at the CND table (almost 3/4).
In this regard, we ought to understand that the preparatory meetings for the upcoming Special Session, as-well as the Session itself are bound to several pre-agreements, which arguably pre-limit the scope and potential of such high-level meeting. For example, the "comprehensive, integrated and balanced approach to addressing the world drug problem” which we will review in the next article.
(1) The sociological gaze could also equally fall upon other actors, such as the research centers that produce illicit drug statistics which in turn inform decision makers, or on the entourage of the numerous national and international drug “tsars” involved in the modern drug control system.
(2) See for examples Bergeron, 2011; Chatwin, 2011, Kübler, 2011; MacGregor, 2011; Monaghan, 2009; Ritter, 2009; Stevens, 2011a; & Valentine, 2009.
(3) As we have seen, Article 9 of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs stipulates that States Parties are responsible for ensuring the availability of controlled medicines, and gives the INCB the mandate to monitor their availability.
(4) As stated by the INCB (2014), the 2016 UNGASS “process is based on the outcomes of the 2014 high-level review by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the implementation by Member States of the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action.”
(5) For the Board, the 1998 U.N. document “elevated the issue of implementing a comprehensive, integrated and balanced approach to the status of a fundamental principle in addressing the world drug problem.” (INCB, 2014, Para: 9)
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