What are drugs and why are they controlled? What are the benefits and harms of taking drugs? How public health policies can address drug use? Learn the answers to these questions and more in the free online course 'Drugs, drug use, drug policy and health'.
Martin Jelsma is a political scientist who has specialised in Latin America and international drugs policy. In 2005, he received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship, which stated that Jelsma "is increasingly recognized as one of, if not the, outstanding strategists in terms of how international institutions deal with drugs and drug policy."...
On 21 September 1976 Chilean secret service agents set off a car bomb in Washington DC killing TNI's director, Orlando Letelier along with Ronni Moffitt, a fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies. Here you will find an overview of dossiers, articles and news related to this brutal assassination, from the steps taken to bring the persons primarily responsible for his assassination to justice, to the The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards: An award given in honor of our fallen colleagues while celebrating new heroes of the human rights movement from the United States and the Americas.
By 1998, when the United Nations convened a special General Assembly on drugs, there was already overwhelming evidence that the current approach to global drugs control had failed miserably, given the continuing rise in consumption and production. However, the evidence was ignored and no evaluation of what was wrong with current drug policy took place. Instead, as a New York Times editorial noted, unrealistic pledges were recycled, this time aiming at eliminating all drug production by the year 2008. In mid-April this year, the mid-term review of the goals and targets set by the special session on drugs is to take place in Vienna.
This briefing sets out the history to the original call for a UN special session on drugs and explains why no genuine evaluation has been permitted to date.
TNI looks back at the unrealistic pledges made at the UNGASS and highlights the obstinate avoidance of the fundamental questions necessary for an evaluation of the efficacy of the current approach to drug control.
TNI is hosting with Platform London a 6-week pilot online peer learning course on energy democracy. The course will include lectures by experts and practitioners along with discussion and active participation, sharing and learning by all participants. It is intended for people who have some experience in working on energy systems, who wish to take a holistic and global look at energy systems and politics, and learn from others. Deadline has passed (3 October), but feel free to register to be on waiting list or for the next course.
Join our 5-week online course for activists, trade unionists, policy-makers and journalists, to understand what makes the ECT dangerous, how the treaty is expanding and greenwashing its record, and what we can do about it.
The Transnational Institute (TNI), in cooperation with the Municipal Services Project (MSP) and the Latin American Programme for Distance Education in Social Sciences (PLED) is offering a free web-based course on Alternatives to Privatisation: Non-Commercial Public Services Options in the Global South. The course will begin on 8 October 2012 and will comprise a series of eight weekly sessions.
El panorama de la legislación de uso y consumo de droga se ha modificado en la última década en función de una flexibilización, indicó el politólogo Martín Jelsma, quien piensa que existe una "tendencia irreversible hacia cambios en el paradigma y en el marco jurídico internacional" de la lucha contra los estupefacientes.
Is Europe being left behind? Sometimes it feels that way. In the US, Colorado and Washington have regulated recreational cannabis use, with Oregon and Alaska following suit. Uruguay is doing the same. Latin America leaders across the continent are turning against the war on drugs.
