THE EVOLUTION of ILLICIT DRUG MARKETS and DRUG POLICY in AFRICA Jason Eligh
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This project is funded by the European Union THE EVOLUTION OF ILLICIT DRUG MARKETS AND DRUG POLICY IN AFRICA Jason Eligh Continental Report 03 | June 2019 Table of contents ECOWAS Economic Community of West List of acronyms ...................................................................................................2 African States FSI Fragile State Index Introduction ............................................................................................................3 G77 Group of 77 and China A brief history of the drug trade in Africa ......................................6 GCDP Global Commission on Drug Policy The evolution of continental drug policy ........................................8 HCV Hepatitis C Virus Current policy approaches to drugs in Africa ..........................16 HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus ICPAD International Conference of The confounding role of regional economic Parliamentarians Against Drugs communities ...............................................................................................33 IDU injecting drug use The influence of global alliances ........................................................39 IGAD Intergovernmental Authority on Role of the African Union .........................................................................46 Development INCB International Narcotics Control Board The African Group of the UN ..................................................................48 LAS League of Arab States The fragmenting continental consensus on drugs .............52 NAM Non-Aligned Movement Why do we need to consider a new approach? ....................53 NPS new psychoactive substance Needle Syringe Programme Aligning development with reform .................................................56 NSP NSVA non-state violent actor It’s time for Africa to lead ..........................................................................58 OHCHR UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights OIC Organisation of Islamic Cooperation List of acronyms OIF International Organisation of the ACHPR African Commission on Human and Francophonie Peoples’ Rights OST opioid substitution therapy AG Africa Group of the UN PG Pompidou Group AU African Union PWID people who inject drugs US Bureau of International Narcotics BINLEA PWUD people who use drugs and Law Enforcement Affairs RADD Russian-African Anti-Drug Dialogue CAP Common African Position SADC Southern African Development CEN-SAD Community of Sahel-Sahara States Community CND Commission on Narcotic Drugs UMA Arab Maghreb Union COMESA Common Market for Eastern and UN United Nations Southern Africa UNDP United Nations Development Programme CPLP Community of Portuguese Language Countries UNGASS United Nations General Assembly Special CSO civil society organisation Session on Drugs EAC East African Community UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ECCAS Economic Community of Central WACD West Africa Commission on Drugs African States WHO World Health Organization 2 The evolution of illicit drug markets and drug policy in Africa Introduction The global order on drugs is collapsing Globally, support for drug policy reform has grown In March 2016 leaders gathered in New York for the over the past 10 years. Even as the drug prohibition UNGASS meeting on the world drug problem. On the consensus-keepers in Vienna have voted for yet surface, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss another 10-year extension to their still unsuccessful 20- interim progress made in the global response to drugs. year strategy for global drug control at the March 2019 Specifically, they were to assess whether any progress was Commission on Narcotic Drugs High Level Review being made toward the objectives of the United Nations’ meeting, a reform movement among global member (UN) 10-year counternarcotic strategy and plan of action.2 states has been gaining credibility and strength. This strategy, grounded in the three international drug The United Nations General Assembly Special Session conventions and devised by members of the UN’s on Drugs (UNGASS) meeting of member states in Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), was approaching New York in 2016 was a soft watershed moment in the end of its second decade. Originally launched in the history of global drug policy. It was significant 1998, it had been extended an additional 10 years after in its revelation that the global consensus on drug failing to achieve any of its original objectives. Thus, prohibition that had existed for 55 years now appears states were keen to revisit the progress of what was a to be an openly fractured and vulnerable accord, one strongly prohibitionist response ahead of its conclusion, that was – and continues to be – in a state of flux. in order to determine what, if anything, needed to be changed in order to achieve the desired results. In this UNGASS 2016 demonstrated that political space case, these were framed around the aspirational political had opened for regional and national reflections on goal of a ‘drug-free world’. the nature of illicit drugs and countries’ domestic responses. By extension, the fragmenting of global drug policy’s ‘Vienna Consensus’ has also provided an opportunity for Africa. The continent could unify Some African indigenous and play a leading role in shaping and implementing a new international drug policy approach. Such authorities often were strong an approach could be grounded in the human advocates of the idea that rights, health and social development objectives of its continental Agenda 2030 goal of sustainable drug consumption is an development, within the wider context of its Agenda 2063 goal of ‘an integrated, prosperous and international threat peaceful Africa’.1 The purpose of this report is to reflect on the changing A number of African states are invested in the global ‘war drug policy environment in Africa, particularly in the on drugs’, and recognise – perhaps more than others – the period leading up to and after the seminal UNGASS importance of the UNGASS in this regard. After all, drug 2016 meeting of member states. It also examines the prohibition has had a long history on the continent. Egypt politics of continental drug policy prohibition and saw the first modern drug law, a hashish ban, issued in reform in the context of the growing global movement October 1800 by Jacques-François Menou in his capacity to embrace drug policy alternatives to the once as general-in-chief of the French Army of the Orient.3 universal approach of strict prohibition. Observations and recommendations are made regarding In addition to the prohibition approaches pursued by incorporating drug policy reform in the context of colonial regimes, Some African indigenous authorities achieving developmental success with respect to the often were strong and original advocates of the idea continental Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 goals. that drug consumption is an international threat. Continental Report 03 / June 2019 3 These authorities were proponents of the first global soon began to expand alongside the developmental ban against cannabis, which originated at the Second expansion of the continent’s newly independent Opium Conference of 1925.4 Cannabis and khat were domestic economies. controlled domestically, through either de jure or de facto measures, in several states. As international drug control measures squeezed supply chains from South Asian and Latin American The international drug control regime developed over source points to their North American and European subsequent decades, driven by the politics of colonial destination markets, new trafficking routes evolved and postcolonial power dynamics, and thematically through African states to circumvent these measures. influenced by orientalist misconceptions and fears New supply channels and, consequently, new around the growing list of internationally controlled markets, opened. substances and their consumers. African states remained active partners in the process, particularly through the work of the Africa African drug markets soon Group of the UN (AG). Consumption of these newly began to expand alongside the scheduled substances was still limited across much of the continent. continent’s new independent However, as states gained independence and initiated national development strategies there was a natural domestic economies alignment of African drug and crime responses with the expanding international structures of drug prohibition The continental consumption, production and and control. distribution of controlled substances such as heroin, This was evident particularly after the UN adopted cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines grew notably its third international drug control instrument, the from the 1980s. The impact of this expanding illicit Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and market on state development was significant, and Psychotropic Substances (1988), and the 1998 adoption paradoxically symbiotic. of the CND’s original Political Declaration and Plan These emerging illicit African drug markets threatened of Action on International Cooperation towards an to undermine the development and security of the Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World continent’s nascent state institutions and structures. At Drug Problem. the same time, they presented new sources of economic The resilience of Africa’s illicit drug markets livelihood and resilience for the continent’s expanding population of poor and vulnerable peoples.6 By this time African states found