Broken Promises and Coca Eradication in Peru

Recommendations

• After being in effect for 43 years, the various schemes for reducing supply, which are spelled out in international treaties on drugs, should be reviewed.

• Eradication, spraying and even substitution-based rural development have proven largely ineffective, harmful and indiscriminate, and have seriously violated basic collective rights.

• These measures contradict international, constitutional and legislative norms that seek recognition of and respect for people's culture and traditions.

• Regulations on illicit crops that were drawn up in 1961 and 1988 conflict with higher-level international norms on the protection of collective rights, which were established later. Authorities — judges, police, district attorneys and other officials — should keep these in mind when enforcing policies.

• Countries like Peru and Bolivia should build a solid partnership to work to change the international control system, beginning with the coca leaf, and adopt specific measures for liberalising it, with regard to traditional markets.