TNI Fellows are internationalist intellectuals with a track record of progressive activist-scholarship and a passionate commitment to social change. They bring TNI vision and new ideas, expertise relevant to current programme, connect TNI to relevant networks and commit themselves to an active role in TNI. TNI Fellowships do not involve any financial remuneration.
For 37 years Colombia has been spraying chemicals to combat illicit crops, particularly coca. These massive eradication programmes became part of the US-backed 'War on Drugs'. The fumigations are controversial for their proven inefficacy to reduce supply and demand for the use of herbicides such as glyphosate.
Drug law reform continues developing in the right direction in several Latin American and Caribbean countries. In Jamaica, for example, a law legalizing the cultivation and consumption of ganja for medicinal, religious and research purposes came into force, as well as the decriminalisation of possession for personal use. Jamaica also spoke out at the UN Thematic Debate in New York. On May 7th, the minister addressed the UN High Level Thematic Debate on international drug policy, highlighting Jamaica’s perspectives on drug control policies and participating in a debate that encourages open and inclusive discussions. Amongst the outcomes Jamaica would like to see from UNGASS is “the establishment of an Expert Advisory Group to review the UN drug policy control architecture, its system-wide coherence, its treaty inconsistencies and its legal tension with cannabis regulations.”
An article published recently in El Espectador commented on the two issues that underpin the Colombian discourse on the subject of drugs. To be precise, the government’s discourse is far from reflecting what goes on in practice, or the actions that are still being carried out in the country. Colombia is seen as the star pupil in complying with the United Nations drug treaties and it continues to do things that many other countries would avoid.
In April 2016, representatives of the world’s nations will gather to evaluate drug policy in a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS). While prohibitionist policies are still the norm, a rising tide of voices are demanding evidence based responses that respect human rights, promote public health, and reduce crime.
In this issue we proudly want to highlight the fabulous reception our Spanish version of report on cannabis, Auge y caída de la prohibición del cannabis received in Spain. The presentation of the report in Barcelona on July 23 - a joint effort of TNI, Cáñamo Magazine and the Hash Marihuana Cáñamo & Hemp Museum - received major press coverage by Spanish mainstream and independent media outlets.
It is unfortunate that 35 years after the first chemical spraying in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we are still writing about aerial sprayings in Colombia, demanding the current government to definitely defer an ecocide and incompetent policy.
It is unfortunate that 35 years after the first chemical spraying in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we are still writing about aerial sprayings in Colombia, demanding the current government – how many governments have not happened since! – to definitely defer an ecocide and incompetent policy. Throughout these years we have seen increasing national and international voices opposing the spraying of coca with the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate).
Many myths surround coca. Every day press accounts around the world use the word coca in their headlines, when in fact they refer to cocaine. TNI's Drugs and Democracy Team exposes the myths and reality surrounding the coca leaf.
Colombia's peace negotiations appear to have a rather simplistic view of drug production and trafficking that does not properly address the complex relationship between drugs and armed conflict.
For fifty years the World’s attitude to and treatment of the coca leaf and coca farmers has been controlled by the UN Drugs Conventions beginning with the Convention of 1961 which prohibited the production, possession and purchase of the coca leaf as well as cocaine. The assertion of this report is that the illegal status of the coca leaf is based upon a misinterpretation of science, first of all in 1950 with the publication of the misleading study of the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf; and much later with the blocking of the publication of a report in 1995 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which made abundantly clear that the coca leaf itself has “no negative health effects”.
EL TARRA, 28 August 2013 (IRIN) - The Colombian government believes people should just say no to growing coca: those that do not, risk aerial spraying of their illicit crop with powerful pesticides, or manual destruction by work teams hired by private firms and supported by the security forces.
At peace talks in Cuba, Colombian guerrilla group the FARC outlined a proposal to legalize drug consumption and cultivation, complementing reforms that are about to be tabled by the Colombian government. Chief negotiator Marquez called for "an end to policies of criminalization and persecution, [and] the suspension of aerial fumigation and other forms of eradication that are generating negative socio-environmental and economic impacts." (See also: Colombia's Farc proposes legal coca and marijuana crops)
TNI Fellows are internationalist intellectuals with a track record of progressive activist-scholarship and a passionate commitment to social change. They bring TNI vision and new ideas, expertise relevant to current programme, connect TNI to relevant networks and commit themselves to an active role in TNI. TNI Fellowships do not involve any financial remuneration.
David Fig is a South African environmental sociologist, political economist, and activist. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, and specializes in questions of energy, the extractive industries, and corporate accountability. He chairs the board of Biowatch South Africa, which is concerned with food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture, and works closely with various...
Ben Hayes is a TNI fellow and an independent researcher and consultant on security policies, counter-terrorism, border control and data protection. He has worked with the civil liberties organisation Statewatch in the UK since 1996, and also consulted for the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the UN High Commission for Refugees, Cordaid, the Heinrich Boll Foundation,...
Lander is one of the leading thinkers and writers on the left in Venezuela. He was a critical supporter of the Venezuelan revolution under Chavez in its early stages. However as the economic policies led to an increasing dependence on oil, consolidating the rentier state, as a huge proportion of the Venezuelan territory has been opened up to transnational mining corporations in a neoliberal mode, and the authoritarian tendencies have became dominant in the Bolivarian Revolution, he has become active in the search for democratic non depredatory alternatives to the Maduro government. He was actively involved in social movements in the Americas that defeated the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).
Hilary Wainwright is a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democratic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is the driving force and editor behind Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine, and has documented countless examples of resurgent democratic movements from Brazil to Britain and the lessons they provide for progressive politics....
Achin Vanaik (India) TNI Fellow and Retired Professor of International Relations and Global Politics from the University of Delhi, Achin is an active member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). He has (co)authored or (co) edited 20 books ranging from studies of India's political economy, issues concerning religion, communalism and secularism as well as international...
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of both TNI and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC where she directs IPS's New Internationalism Project. Phyllis specialises in U.S. foreign policy issues, particularly involving the Middle East and United Nations. She worked as a journalist at the UN for ten years and currently serves as a special adviser to several top-level UN officials on Middle...
Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. is a Filipino political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. He was part of the core organising team that established the international peasant movement La Via Campesina and has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements. He is...
Daniel Chavez, a TNI fellow, specialises in left politics, state companies and public services. He is an active contributor of the Municipal Services Project (MSP) research network, has contributed to Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South (Routledge, 2012) and has co-edited The Reinvention of the State: Public Enterprises and Development in...
David Bewley Taylor is the founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory at Swansea University, UK. He has been researching various aspects of drug policy for over twenty years with his main areas of interest being US drug policy, the UN and international drug policy and more recently counter narcotics strategies in Afghanistan....
Manuel Perez Rocha is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and regular contributor to TNI's Alternative Regionalisms programme who has been associated with TNI since 1996 when he began work on EU-Latin America relations.
Ricardo Vargas Meza is a Sociologist with a Masters in Social Philosophy from the National University of Colombia. He is an author, among other texts of Fumigation and Conflict: Anti-drugs policies and the delegitimisation of the Colombian state (Tercer Mundo, TNI and Acción Andina, December 1999); Drugs, Armed Conflict and Alternative Development (Acción Andina Colombia, June 2003, Bogotá);...
Associate Myriam Vander Stichele has been monitoring international trade negotiations and agreements since 1990, both at a regional and global level. She is an advisor to many NGOs whose indepth research on investment agreements and policies, and private investor strategies has sparked many international campaigns....
Arruda is an economist and veteran popular educator, who has worked closely with Brazilian labour, co-operatives and solidarity economy movements for many years. Arruda has served as an advisor to local governments and as visiting professor in universities in Brazil and abroad. He is a facilitator for the Gaia Education Program and is active in the Ecovillage and the Transition Towns movements....
Kees Biekart has co-ordinated TNI projects on and with the Central American peasant movement, and the politics of European NGO aid to civil society organisations in the South....
Kamil Mahdi is an experienced analyst of Middle Eastern politics and economics, in particular the political economy of oil-exporting countries. Mahdi is secretary of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, researching Iraq's economy, politics and modern history including the politics and economics of sanctions, conflict and occupation. His other interests include economic...
Former Co-Director of TNI, Joel Rocamora has been working for several decades on issues of democracy, governance, and social movements within the Philippines....
Former TNI director (1993-95), Jochen Hippler is a specialist on the Muslim Middle East (mostly Arab countries) and Central Asian politics (mostly Afghanistan and Pakistan)....
Howard Wachtel is a former TNI fellow and an expert on the financialisation of the global economy who foresaw the financial crisis long before it struck in autumn 2008. His book in 2003 Street of Dreams. Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street's First Century (London: Pluto Press) is a widely respected history of the infamous New York street. Howard was the first co-ordinator of TNI's...
John Cavanagh has been Director of IPS since 1998 and a founding fellow of TNI. He worked as an international economist for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (1978-1981) and the World Health Organization (1981-1982). ...
Mariano Aguirre is Director of the Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution (NOREF). A journalist and analyst on the Middle East, US foreign policy, international conflicts, peacebuilding and peacekeeping, he has written, co-authored and edited several books, among them: La ideología neoimperial: La crisis de EEUU con Irak (Icaria/TNI/CIP 2003), co-authored with Phyllis Bennis and "...
Gonzalo Berrón, TNI Associate Fellow, has played a leading role in coordinating Latin American movements resisting corporate "Free Trade Agreements." He has been an integral part of ongoing discussions with civil society and progressive governments on building alternative just regional trade and financial architecture in Latin America. ...
Dot Keet is a South African academic and activist involved in many national, African and international networks resisting corporate "free trade" agreements. She is an active member of the national South African Trade Strategy Group (TSG) and the Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network (SAPSN), the key coordinator of the Southern African Social Forum (SASF); as well as the continent...
Boris Kagarlitsky is a well-known international commentator on Russian politics and society. Boris was a deputy to the Moscow City Soviet between 1990-93, during which time he was a member of the executive of the Socialist Party of Russia, co-founder of the Party of Labour, and advisor to the Chairperson of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia. Previously, he was a student...
Author of more than 14 books, Bello was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2003 for "... outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to it can be implemented." Bello has been described by the Economist as the man “who popularised a new term: deglobalisation.”...
Tom Reifer is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego and publishes widely on global peace and social justice issues. He has also been a long-time activist in the anti-nuclear movement as well as a rank and file trade union activist. His specialty is the study of large-scale, long-term social change and world-systems analysis. ...
Based in Amsterdam, David works as an independent researcher and writer. As an associate of the Norwegian think-tank NOREF, he currently focuses on public control over transnational flows affecting societies on the global periphery. Professional activities since 1970 provided a basis for books and articles on the politics of foreign aid, and on Africa, particularly Angola and South Africa....
Inclusion of the drug issue on the agenda of the peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC, which are being held in Havana, Cuba, is a smart move.
Although the legislative trend in Colombia has tended towards the criminalization of possession and consumption of psychoactive substances, decriminalization prevailed when it comes to jurisprudence. In addition, while the government of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) insisted on prohibiting, persecuting and punishing drug consumption through legislative and judicial channels, the country’s health sector, influenced by more progressive trends for dealing with consumption, made important progress in the areas of risk and harm reduction.
This note provides an overview of human rights and international law concerns raised by the 2011 Annual Report of the International Narcotics Control Board. These include questionable legal reasoning by the Board; the absence of broader human rights norms; problematic statements on specific issues; unqualified comments and support for policies despite human rights risks; and stigmatising language unbecoming a UN entity. These are patterns that are evident in previous Annual Reports.
In a widely watched You Tube video, U.S. President Barack Obama is asked whether or not the drug war may in fact be counterproductive. Instead of the resounding NO that would have come from any of his recent predecessors, Obama responded: “I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate.” He then qualified his remarks by adding, “I am not in favor of legalization.” Nonetheless, even acknowledging the legitimacy of debate on U.S. drug policy is a significant shift from the past, when successive administrations stifled discussion and routinely labeled anyone promoting alternative approaches to the socalled U.S. “war on drugs” as dangerous and surreptitiously promoting massive drug use and poisoning America’s youth.
