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1/3 The IDCR - The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)

  • Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy
  • May 16, 2016
  • 11 min read

Because UNODC received “its mandate to address the global drug problem from the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) and three major international drug control treaties ” (UNODC, 2015), the CND greatly influence the role and policy implementation of the U.N, drug-control agency. The later institutions, along with the International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) form what is called the 'Vienna triumvirate" of the U.N. drug control apparatus and have dedicated much energy to two priorities inherent to established bureaucracies, namely to expand their pre-edge and to increase their influence.

We argue here that these three institutions are becoming increasingly isolated in regard to their law-enforcement, criminal justice and prohibitive drug-related policy views. These orientations contrast with the quasi-unanimous public health oriented take that other U.N. agencies have supported. With growing dissent, the rest of the U.N. system agencies have arguably intended to shift global efforts towards the proclaimed initial care expressed in the drug control conventions for “the health and welfare of mankind.” (1)

The United Nations drug control policy actors:

For many observers of the IDCR, “there is a need for a paradigm shift and a return to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.” (Bewley-Taylor, 2005) This recalibration is notably pertinent in regard to the role, influence and views on the current regime enacted by the two institutions, that composed the IDCR alongside UNODC. Theses institutions are the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) and the International Narcotic Control Board (INCB), which during decades have arguably unequally balanced the three interconnected pillars theoretically forming the core of the U.N. system: human rights, development and security. Specifically, making the latter, with a narrow state-centered view, the central focus of global drug control policies.

The CND is composed of only a limited number of U.N. member states which possess permanent representation at the U.N. Vienna headquarters. These countries, principally coming from the Global North, have often represented the current positions and policy views held by agents attempting to preserve the drug-control prohibition oriented status quo. Officially, it affirms in 2015 “that policies and strategies for countering the world drug problem must have as aims the well-being, dignity and social inclusion of the individual, taking into account that the world drug problem must be addressed from a comprehensive and balanced perspective, in full respect of international law and international human rights law and the three United Nations drug control conventions.” (CND 58th Session, Item 7, 2015) But as we will see, by observing its membership and functioning, it has often acted, neither in spirit nor in the letter, towards a 'comprehensive and balanced' manner, nor with the absolute necessity to protect human rights.

The INCB on the other hand, is not composed of representatives of member states, but of so-called 'experts' of the drug-policy field. Officially, they are charged with assuring the compliance of member states to the IDCR, which it defines as such: “the international drug control system was established out of concern for the health and welfare of humankind, and with the aim of meeting the medical and scientific needs for narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances while preventing the illicit use of controlled substances.” (INCB, 2014) This dual necessity, similarly to the conduct of the CND, has been in practice pretty far off from the above given definition as we will observe in a latter article through the analysis of its mandate, functioning, membership and yearly reports.

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)

In the text, the CND “analyses the world drug situation and develops proposals to strengthen the international drug control system to combat the world drug problem.” (2) Created in 1946 as an adviser body of the the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the CND is also responsible for drafting international agreements on all matters related to drug control. Hence, the Commission was behind the draft of the three international drug conventions and the subsequent drug-related U.N. Declarations (3). Comprised of 53 U.N. member states elected for four years within and by the ECOSOC (4), the Commission meets every year for a period not exceeding eight days (5). Other non-country members can sit at the table with an 'Observer' status and without voting rights.

At the CND table, the composition of a country delegation can often indicate the chosen approach of a particular nation to drug control policy and who makes decisions within their national governments in regard to this matter. As of today, the vast majority of the delegations members come from the traditional domestic diplomatic corps and are sent by their respective ministry of foreign affairs. Consequently, few countries actually send representatives with a specific drug policy background. As we will see, this has a large impact on the way the CND works and enacts resolutions. Diplomacy and consensus remain the key words of conduct and greatly impact the official role of the Commission, namely “to assist the ECOSOC in supervising the application of the international drug control treaties”; “to function as the governing body of the UNODC, and to approve the budget of the Fund of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme.” (6)

The analysis of its membership and functions can help us shed a light on the ideological role undertaken by the Commission on the decade long resistance to change and non-evolution of the IDCR, as well as the absence of proper review process of the current regime.

  • The members

Most of the country representatives of the CND are diplomats, but often with a predominant background in law enforcement and the security fields. Reinforced by a restrained U.N. member states representativity, observers of the Commission have argued that a strong international commitment to perpetuate the status quo exist within the CND. Encouraged by strong inertia, institutional limitations (7), financial constraints and geographical displacement from the New York based U.N. Secretary General office and General Assembly gathering, the representation of the CND remain fundamentally unequal.

With the CND, changes have to be planned in advance, usually over several years. As described by Cindy Fazey (2003), the process knows its own time: “Any changes achieved have never occurred through debates on the floor of the Commission, but first through informal agreement between groups of states. These agreements are then taken back to national governments for discussion, to be taken forward at the next Commission. A resolution will be drafted by a Member State, usually before the meeting and now sometimes circulated by e-mail to people and delegations that are known to favour the views being put forward. This is where personal knowledge and friendships come into the policy dimension. An initial meeting of interested parties where changes and additions are made, is followed by several informal meetings before a submission to the Secretariat, who will have it translated into the six official UN languages.The draft resolution will be circulated, with those countries that take a particular interest adding or deleting what they find acceptable or unacceptable. Some contentious resolutions will go through several drafts, others only one. Usually if agreement cannot be achieved the resolution does not go forward and very rarely is it withdrawn once submitted. Resolutions are then submitted at the end of the meeting for adoption by the CND and/or onward transmission for adoption later by ECOSOC.”

As we observed during the UNGASS 2016 preparation meetings, the debates within the Commission can often seem disconnected with the realities on the ground of the current regime. Although, such long policy process is not uncommon within the U.N., the fact that the CND has been able to resist to any kind of change which did not conform to the orthodox view of the IDCR, is probably one of the strongest U.N. school case of bureaucratic and ideological paralysis. National situations in relation to illicit drugs arising from specific contexts, countries often find themselves in cantilevered with other nations, which partly explains the difficulty to obtain consensus, which is the base of all agreements within the Commission.

On one hand, since the end of the Cold War, a surprising set of allies, including the U.S., the majority of the Ex-soviet block countries, Arab nations and several European hardliners, have found a common ground in order to keep the status quo intact, although often paradoxically for quite opposite reasons. On the other hand, because of the way the CND works, countries favoring change can only promote their views not by confrontation and addresses during annual sessions but “by elaborating their policies and arguing that they fall within the Conventions.But different combined factors can also bring countries together. ” (Fazey, 2003) These different conjunctions can often greatly limits the scope, pertinence and realization of any desired policy change.

  • Functioning

The Secretariat of the CND, which has the high hand on the agenda and place of the Commission’s sessions, is located within the UNODC headquarters in Vienna. It is mainly composed of international lawyers and high administration personnel dedicated to insure that the Commission runs steadily. In this environment, even more than in other U.N. institutions, conditions for the preservation of the status quo are perfectly aligned. As Cindy Fazey (2003) described it: “in this culture, rows and dissent, even arguments, are avoided, so it is inevitable that senior officers are never in the forefront of change. That is simply not their role. Any changes have to be agreed by the Member States and driven through by them.”

This is one of the reasons why investigating such organizations, the way it works and doesn’t, the way it is being funded, how people access to offices there, remains important today, if we wish to understand the inertia that characterizes the IDCR and if evolution and changes are desired. Consensus remains the motus operandi exclusively used by country member representatives in order to take decisions when sieging at the CND. No votes are ever taken, as by tradition only countries that have fully-paid their annual contribution can partake in a vote. Since several countries, including the U.S., are behind their dues, “there is an informal agreement that nobody votes.” (Fazey, 2003)

If consensus is not necessarily the wrong choice of decision making process in itself, the way it is used by members, often results in decisions taken based on the lowest possible shared denominator. This mutual agreement is often the one offending the least numbers of countries. In this regard, if a member shows opposition to a particular resolution, “it would not go through. Attempts would be made outside the plenary session to resolve disputes, but if this could not be done some face-saving solution, compromise or vague wording in a resolution would be used.” (Fazey, 2003) Similarly, when a choice of word in a resolution comes as problematic for a member, it is usually simply taken out. Accordingly, votes never occur (8) and are not an option at the CND, no matter how important an issue can be (9). As Damon Barrett and Manfred Nowak (2009) remaind us, “the ‘spirit of Vienna’, an unwritten agreement between country delegations, means that the desire for consensus has become the demand for unanimity.”

Consequently, we start to understand how concepts such as accountability and review processes can be perceived as negligible, much as confrontational topics such as human rights can become next to impossible to advance within the Commission when virtually every country has an effective veto power. Additionally, as mentioned by Barrett and Nowak (2009), the CND “is weak on civil society engagement, weak on transparency and all but unaccountable for its decisions..” And because no NGO liaison office exists and as there is no official way to trace back contribution made to the Commission from potential civil society organizations, the member states can advance pretty much any views without any fear of being contradicted (10).

To better get a sense of how the CND functions when there is actually a sense of divide in between members, Katherine Pettus, from the IDPC (2014b) was able to describe the debate at a CND inter-sessional meeting on January 14, 2014: “This debate rhetorically symbolised the ideological divides in the room. Countries wanting to retain “cornerstone” – thereby maximising the importance of the international drug conventions – were France, Canada, Russia, the UK and China. For Venezuela (and others, such as Uruguay) the word “framework” implies greater flexibility, while also acknowledging the importance of other relevant conventions and treaties (including those on human rights and public health).” Although, the debate may seem to exist here, observers of such meetings, would nonetheless recognize that negotiations are carefully handled and each words and sentences are written down only after long consideration. Such moments in the CND, are the high peaks of a debate on an ideologically charged and very sensible topic among a diverse community and demonstrate the importance, often the predominance, of process over content. However, “what can appear as pedantic debate also reveals that delegates believe that what they say matters and that what they say is connected to what their countries actually do vis-à-vis national and global drug policy.” (IDPC, 2014b)

To conclude here, we could agree with the definition of researcher Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch (2013) which presents the Commission as “a self-congratulatory remnant of the old UN” and where “many of its members seem stuck on the drug war rhetoric of the 1999s (as) it remains too buffered from external realities and the pace of change does not match the urgency.” Similarly, for Cindy Fazey (2003), the CND statements demonstrate how the Commission’s “meeting are (being) manipulated in the interests of” the major UNODC country donors; the “CND's ‘civil service.’” However, as she points out, these countries remain divided on policy or regarding the latitude offered by the drug control conventions. This divide is being increasingly felt none-standing the polite debate occurring within the Commission. Indeed, if, most of the “CND decisions reflect the lowest level of disagreement” (Fazey, 2003), significant differences on domestic policy remain voluntarily ignored by the Commission.

If contrary to the UNODC, and as we will see to the INCB, the CND has not shown an ounce of evolution in discourse and actions regarding the current IDCR, we can argue that it is mostly because of the way the Commission works that the calcification of drug-control policy is so blatant there. But one could argue that what is not shown publicly, does not necessarily mean that it does not exist. If a dogmatic institution such as the INCB can show traces of evolution, at least in speech, change in policy could theoretically be right around the corner.

 

(1) Theoretically recognized in the Preamble of the 1961 Single Convention on Drugs, as “the overarching concern of the drug control system.” (UN Convention, 1961, Preamble, p.1)

(2) CND website, Mandate and functions of the CND. See: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/commissions/CND/01-its-mandate-and-functions.html

(3) See: E/RES/1991/38 United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Terms of Reference of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

(5) See: E/RES/1991/39. United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Functioning of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs and provisional agenda for its thirty-fifth session.

(7) Cindy Fazey (2003) reminds us that “because ECOSOC has 54 members, the CND cannot be larger than its parent body. Furthermore, being elected within this forum take dedication, time, power-relations and financial means."

(8) With a notable exception of substance scheduling changes under international control as we will see in Part C of this Chapter.

(9) Hypothetically, a coalition of willing, like minded-country itching for reform, and to date with their U.N. financial contributions could create quite a ravel.

(10) The authors further explain that “summary records of debates are not publicised, and the reports of the annual sessions are extremely limited.” (Barret & Nowak, 2009) As we will see in the Chapter II, the UNGASS preparation debates are possible to be followed only because of the incredibly valuable work done by civil society organizations such as the International Drug Policy Consortium, notably with the CND blog: http://cndblog.org


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