WHO Critical Review of Coca Leaf A Comprehensive Overview

18 June 2025

Nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of coca leaf chewing, the World Health Organization (WHO), at Bolivia’s initiative and supported by Colombia, has conducted a ‘critical review’ to reassess if coca is appropriately scheduled in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

Here you can find all relevant information and documentation related to this review.

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A Grand Opportunity Lost

After a two-year critical review process, in December 2025, the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) decided to uphold the Schedule I classification of the coca leaf.

The decision not to change anything in how coca leaf is controlled by the international drugs treaties is a great deception for Andean-Amazonian Indigenous Peoples and coca growing communities, and for TNI and our partners who supported them in decades of struggles to push for a change in the global ban of the plant.

The Committee’s decision shows the incapacity of the international drug control system to resolve the longstanding tensions between the UN drug treaties and this ancestral plant. While the WHO critical review did not find evidence of meaningful public health harms of coca leaf, its ‘convertibility’ into cocaine will continue to condemn its legal status.

The continued legal restrictions will withhold access to its health benefits for people around the world, and prevent the Indigenous roots of coca culture from finally rising to global recognition. The WHO decision shows that many of the arguments presented during the review process have been neglected by the ECDD, and that the fundamental issue of Indigenous cultural rights was totally ignored.

The latest episode in our Coca Chronicles series unpacks the main arguments used by the WHO to arrive at its controversial conclusion, and lays out the structural shortcomings and inconsistencies of the UN drug control system with regard to the control of plants and human rights obligations.

Recent developments

Since the WHO does not propose any change in current scheduling of the coca leaf, there will be no vote during the forthcoming 69th CND in Vienna (9-13 March). However, there will be several moments to raise questions to the WHO and to discuss the implications of this decision during the official agenda and at several interactive dialogues and side events. At this CND, TNI will launch a video recently made based on interviews with coca farmers, Indigenous representatives and coca consumers in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, reflecting their reactions to the WHO decision.

Coca Chronicles: Monitoring the UN Coca Review

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) will be monitoring the coca review process closely and examining key aspects of the debate.

Publications

WHO Cocaine Project

Martin Jelsma: Descheduling Coca: Challenges and Outcome Scenarios of the WHO review

Consultations in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru

During 2024 TNI and its partners in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, organised consultations on the critical review of coca by the WHO and its potential consequences. A total of 10 meetings were organised, with around 400 participants. The participants consisted of coca farmers, most with native indigenous roots, academics and coca experts, human rights activists and representatives of Indigenous Peoples of the Andean-Amazon region. In the case of Peru several initiatives were taken, by farmers organisations and academics, to call on the government to support the efforts to declassify the coca leaf.

Consultations in Bolivia about the coca review process, organized with Amigos de la Tierra (ASAT) and the ‘Alianza por la Vida’ (September 2024, in Spanish)
Dialogue in Mitú (Vaupés, Colombia) about the coca review process with Indigenous Peoples from the Colombian Amazon region, organized with VisoMutop, OHCHR and Senator Julio César Estrada (13-14 January 2025, in Spanish).
Consultations in Tumaco (Nariño) and Toribío (Cauca) about the coca review process with Indigenous Peoples and people of African descent in Colombia, organized with VisoMutop (October 2024, in Spanish).
Letter from Ricardo Soberón, former DEVIDA director, to the Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, arguing why Peru should support the Bolivian initiative for a critical review of the coca leaf (August 2024, in Spanish).
Letter from CONPACCP (National Confederation of Agricultural Producers of the Coca Valleys of Peru) to the Peruvian President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking them to support the Bolivian initiative for a critical review of the coca leaf (August 2024, in Spanish).
Letter from POFEPOPA (Confederation of Peruvian Agricultural Producers of the Monzón Valley) to the Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, expressing their support for the declassification of the coca leaf (August 2024, in Spanish).
Declaration of the XIX International Congress on the Sacred Coca Leaf, asking for the withdrawal of the coca leaf from Schedule I, 5 August 2024, Pichari, VRAE, Cusco, Peru.
Peruvian civil society response to the biased report presented to the WHO by the Peruvian government in October 2024, elaborated by a group of Peruvian academics and farmers organisations (December 2024, in Spanish).

Legal status and criminalisation

In the neighbouring countries of Peru and Bolivia, where coca has been part of daily life for centuries, coca use has increased over the last decades. In Argentina in particular coca chewing has a firm place amongst the population of the Northern provinces, and also Chile has coca consuming Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. In other Latin American and European countries migrants from the Andean region bring their habits of coca use with them when moving across borders and are regularly confronted with criminalisation.

Coca in Argentina: Resistance to being classified as a “narcotic”, Alejandro Corda, Intercambios Civil Association (Buenos Aires, May 2025).
The Coca Leaf in Chile: A Review of the Legal Status: Analysis of their legal status based on case studies, Claudia Levine, Lobeliana Foundation (Santiago, Chile, May 2025).
Video: TESTIMONY: Cocaine and its legal problems in Chile (subtitled in English)
Coca Leaf in Court: Cultural Rights and the Toxicological Labyrinth, Constanza Sánchez, José Carlos Bouso, Pien Metaal and Roberto Castro, ICEERS (Barcelona, July 2022).
Migrants and Traditional Use: The Coca Leaf Travels from the Andean Amazon to the European Courts, ICEERS (May 2019).
A decade of providing legal defence support for coca leaf cases in Spain, Drugs Habits and Social Policy 25(3), Constanza Sánchez and José Carlos Bouso (September 2024).