History of the Drugs & Democracy project

TNI’s Drugs and Democracy programme started in 1995, as a result of the Institute’s work with peasant farmers in Latin America, which sought to defend the human rights of people caught up in the illegal drugs economy and repressed by the “war on drugs.”

The initial focus on Latin America led to work on issues such as the effects of chemical spraying in Colombia; the impact of new US military anti-drug bases in Ecuador, the Dutch Antilles, El Salvador and Ecuador; Plan Colombia and the drug-related obstacles in the Colombian peace talks between the FARC guerrillas and the government; and the intensification of forced eradication operations in Bolivia and Peru with accompanying human rights violations and deepening social conflicts. This work led to strong relationships with local partners across Latin America.

“It is not always easy to explain how we manage to connect the local to the global, in one moment present at a cocaleros meeting in the Andes or talking to heroin users and dealers on the Burmese border, and the next moment participating in a policy conference on alternative development, the EU drugs strategy or UN drug control.” (Martin Jelsma in 10 years: TNI’s Drugs and Democracy Programme, 1998-2008)

In the run-up to the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in 1998, TNI increasingly became involved in calling for reform of UN Drug policies, expressed in the international drug control conventions of 1961 (Single Convention on Narcotics), 1971 (Convention on Psychotropic Substances) and 1988 (Convention against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances).

Since then, the knowledge that TNI built up through working on the UN’s policy earned TNI a reputation as one of the best informed watchdogs of the UN drug control process.

At the same time, this increased international attention has brought the program to generate research and analysis on drug production and trade in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, especially Burma, and in Afghanistan in Central Asia. We study the impact of the opium economy and the internal conflicts on civilians.

In 2009, we launched the Drug Law Reform in Latin America project, whose goal is both to promote more effective and humane drug policies through dialogue and analysis in the countries under study, and to inform a wide audience on the ongoing discussions, and changes in drug laws. This project was created in the context of growing evidence that the long war against drugs in the region has failed. The current drug control policies have focused on drug users and small scale dealers, while large criminal organizations continue to operate without restrictions. The project calls for applying the principles of harm reduction, proportionality in sentencing, and a reform of the countries prison systems, among others.