General News Archives - Page 34 of 75 - Drug Policy Network SEE

Collection of models of good practice

Posted on 18/09/2020 by Milutin

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Guidance Prevention and control of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs identifies good practice for prevention and control of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs. This guidance aims to support policy makers in Europe to plan adequate, evidence-based, pragmatic, and rationally designed public health responses for the prevention and control of infections among people who inject drugs. It aims at public health programme planners and decision makers working in the fields of infectious diseases, general public health, addiction and mental healthcare, social services, and drug control at national and regional levels.

Published n 2011, the Guidance is currently being updated. In addition to ongoing systematic reviews of peer-reviewed literature, a collection of models of good practice has been initiated by the two agencies, that should add practice-based evidence derived from interventions implemented in real-life, European settings.

The two EU agencies are inviting applications to report models of good practice targeting PWID population aiming to:

improve community-based testing
increase linkage to care
increase adherence to treatment of infection interventions
prevention or reduction of infections through successful health promotion approaches

The infections of interest are hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV), HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

Should you or your organisation be interested in reporting a model of good practice that fits the scope of this call, please express your interest following this link>>>.

European Drug Report 2020 to be released on 22 September

Posted on 14/09/2020 by Milutin

The EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) launches its European Drug Report 2020: Trends and Developments in a live online media event on 22 September.

In this latest annual review – marking 25 years of monitoring – the EMCDDA describes the drug situation at the end of 2019, along with recent changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of patterns emerging across the EU, Turkey and Norway in the areas of drug supply, illicit drug use and associated public health problems. National data sets are also provided across these themes and on key harm-reduction interventions. In a new format, chapters are organised primarily by drug type and by related harms.

Accompanying the report this year will be a Key Issues summary (in 24 languages), presenting a selection of the main findings from the latest analysis, chosen for their policy relevance and general interest. The 2020 Statistical Bulletin, containing the European dataset underpinning the report, will also be available.

Attend the live online media event to hear the key issues and latest analysis on 22 September 2020 at 10.00 (Lisbon), 11.00 CET.

Further details will be available in the run-up to the launch at: www.emcdda.europa.eu/edr2020.

NGO Marketplace and civil society engagement at the CND

Posted on 11/09/2020 by Milutin

The Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (VNGOC) together with the UNODC Civil Society Team are inviting you to a joint webinar presenting the NGO Marketplace and giving guidance on how to engage effectively at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).

The webinar will include a tour through the new features of the NGO Marketplace, information on this years CND intersessional meetings and guidance on how to best apply for speaking opportunities.

To ensure a broad engagement, the webinar will be held twice:

Monday, 21 July 2020, 4 pm CEST, Vienna (2 pm UTC)
Tuesday, 22 July 2020, 10 am CEST, Vienna (8 am UTC)

To register, .

Webinars on Human Rights Violations Data Gathering

Posted on 10/09/202011/09/2020 by Milutin

The Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) planned to conduct a 2-day regional workshop for activists and professionals from South East Europe countries “Gathering data on human rights violations and reaction mechanisms” on 18 – 19 March 2020, in Belgrade, Serbia. Unfortunately, due to coronavirus pandemic, the workshop was postponed for better times.

The organiser finally decided not to wait for better times and provide the opportunity to take part in a series of 3 short webinars in a new exciting format.

The webinars will be organized in zoom on September 16, 23 and 31 and will last for 2 hours each from 14:00 till 16:00 (Central Europe time, GMT+2).

Goal of the workshop is to equip activists and professionals in South East Europe countries with knowledge on principles and mechanisms of data collection on human rights violations against key populations and follow-up reaction.

Facilitators of the workshop will be Mikhail Golichenko, International Legal Consultant, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and Maria Plotko, Program Officer, Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA).

Prior to each webinar you will be provided with 1-hour thematic videos/podcasts of experts dialogues, which you will examine beforehand, and during webinars we will jointly discuss them, answer your questions and work in interactive way.

Webinars will be open to all – number of participants is not limited!

The registration form will be published closer to the date of the first webinar. Please, follow the EHRA website for more information.

New Psychoactive Substance use in Eastern Europe

Posted on 09/09/2020 by Milutin

From the EHRA webpage

The phenomenon of new psychoactive substances (NPS) started decades ago with the growth and production of drugs that replicate the effects of controlled drugs (such as amphetamines, cocaine, cannabis and heroin) but avoid legislative control based on different chemical structures.

In recent years, the increasing use of NPS has led to new threats for health of people who use drugs (PWUD) – including overdose, psychotic reactions, high HIV risks due to multiple injections and increased number of sexual contacts. However, in many countries service providers such as harm reduction, drug treatment programs and ambulance services are not prepared to provide PWUD with quality support and counselling to reduce risks of NPS.

In the Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) region the situation with NPS is truly alarming and has become one of the major challenges for the national public health systems, local NGOs, communities PWUD.

The Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) in partnership with School of Law, Swansea University undertook the project “New Psychoactive Substance Use in Moldova, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Serbia” to generate a more accurate picture of the use of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and to assess harm reduction and law enforcement responses to the emerging issues related to use of NPS. Results from this project will supplement scarce international data on the use of NPS in these countries, present a more accurate picture of their use, and provide information to national civil society organizations (CSOs) for political advocacy.

Irena Molnar, a researcher from the non-governmental organization Re Generation (the only CSO that conducts activities aimed at dealing with NPS in Serbia, DPNSEE member organisation), prepared the report for Serbia, the only country involved in the project from South East Europe. Here is a brief overview of it:

The appearance of NPS in Serbia is not a new phenomenon, but their market share is very small. NPS have been talked about for a whole decade, although scientific research and answers to their appearance in the form of special services aimed at ensuring the health and well-being of users, but also the whole society, have not progressed at all.

Among other things, the report examines in detail the actions taken by the state in the context of this issue and formulates recommendations for improvement. For example, in order to improve the response to problems related to the emergence and use of NPS, greater state involvement is needed in terms of adapting to rapid market changes. This means not only putting substances on the banned list, for which Serbia is very up to date, but also improving the entire system.

To read the reports, follow this link>>>.

Joint input into the Global Fund Strategy Development from CEECA region

Posted on 08/09/202009/09/2020 by Milutin

On September 1st the document named “Joint input into the Global Fund Strategy Development from key affected communities and civil society from CEECA region” was send to the Global Fund in a response to an earlier invitation from the Global Fund to join the Open Consultation to Inform the Development of its new Post-2022 Strategy Strategy.

Discussions were organized by the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) and involved key regional networks that unite key affected communities and civil society organizations working in the Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) region. Initial focus-group discussion was held on June 25th during the Regional Partners’ coordination call organized by the Regional Civil Society and Community Support, Coordination and Communication Platform – Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA).

The resulting draft document was circulated for comments during August 2020 among the leaders of the following nine regional networks and organizations of civil society and key affected communities that unite hundreds of national community-based entities as well as civil society groups in 29 countries of the region:

Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA)
Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity (ECOM)
TB Europe Coalition (TBEC)
Center for Health policies and Studies (Center PAS)
Alliance for Public Health (APH)
Eurasian Key Populations Health Network (EKHN)
AFEW International
Regional Expert Group on Migration and Health
Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN)
Eurasian union of adolescents and young people Teenergizer

You may find the resulted document following this link: https://eecaplatform.org/en/joint-input/.

Open letter on the proposed EU Drugs Agenda

Posted on 08/09/2020 by Milutin

A sign-on letter of the International Drug Policy Consortium’s (IDPC) members, raising our very serious concerns regarding the new EU Agenda and Action Plan on Drugs, recently published by the European Commission was prepared and sent to the German presidency of the EU Horizontal Working Party on Drugs.

We have serious concerns regarding both the process for its development as well as with the substance of the document and urge the German Presidency to propose to the EU Horizontal Working Party on Drugs (HDG) that this draft cannot be accepted, and to outline an appropriate and inclusive strategic development process for the next EU drugs strategy.

The new EU Agenda proposes a drastic and negative change in EU drug policies that could also end up impacting funding priorities and national policies.

It puts a disproportionate focus on supply control,
It deprioritises public health and harm reduction,
It reduces the role of civil society and people who use drugs
And it risks weakening EU support for balanced, evidence-based, and rights-compliant drug policies in global drug debates.

The 2021-25 EU Drugs Agenda appears to be the result of a hasty, opaque and non-participatory policy-making process, and represents a drastic departure from agreed EU policies. It also comes within a deeply troubling stigmatising frame, as it was published in a press release together with EU strategies on child abuse and firearm trafficking.

The key flaws in the draft Agenda we identified include:

Losing the balanced approach
Deprioritising human rights and public health
Dropping support for key international documents
Reducing the space for civil society and people who use drugs
Weakening the external dimensions of drug policy
Deprioritising scientific evidence
A stigmatising document

The letter has now been sent to Germany as the Council Presidency, inviting them to take political leadership and encourage the HDG to reject the draft proposed by the European Commission.

An advocacy campaign follows. The first event is the meeting of EU Member States on Wednesday 9 September 2020! We encourage you to share the letter with your government contacts, so that they are aware of our concerns ahead of this important meeting.

The letter is available following this link>>>. Don’t hesitate to distribute it freely.

5th harm reduction conference postponed

Posted on 04/09/202007/09/2020 by Milutin

The Fifth European Harm Reduction Conference, planned for 4 to 6 November 2020 in Prague, Czechia, is finally postponed.

The organiser of the Conference Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network made a lot on preparations, including exploring different options for holding it. Unfortunately, they had to postpone it for the next year. Here is their message:

In regard of the still unstable situation around COVID-19 and our discussions with main partners, we decided to postpone the conference to 2021. We waited as long as possible for this decision because we think face to face meetings are crucial and important also under this threat, but the disadvantages are too strong to neglect.

We aim to organise the meeting at the earliest (safe) opportunity in 2021 and come back to you with more information soon. We hope you continue to stay with us during the new process of preparations.

Call for nominations

Posted on 18/08/202019/08/2020 by Milutin

The Robert Carr Fund is pleased to announce a call for nominations for both International Steering Committee Civil Society Members and Program Advisory Panel Members

ISC Civil Society (CS) Members

The ISC civil society members are elected in their individual capacity, and do not formally represent particular constituencies or organizations. However, they are encouraged to consult with and draw upon the skills, knowledge and experience of their respective constituencies or organizations. There is on the International Steering Committee an equal number of seats for civil society members and donors. The number of civil society members enables a proper mix that reflects different types of networks, inadequately served populations and regions.

New Members will be nominated through an open call for nominations. The selection criteria focus on diverse representation and gender balance, to ensure that there is a strong representation from high HIV burden countries and inadequately served populations, including people living with HIV.

For more information on the membership and how to apply, please check out the RCF website.

Program Advisory Panel (PAP) Members

The Program Advisory Panel (PAP) reviews grant proposals and makes recommendations for funding to the ISC, and also provides on-going programmatic advice to the Robert Carr Fund about opportunities for funding, grantee capacity building and technical support, and monitoring and evaluation.

PAP members will be nominated through an open call for nominations. The nominations will be reviewed and comparatively scored by a subcommittee of members of the ISC. The ISC decides on a final list of PAP members. The Chair and Vice-Chair will be nominated by majority vote by the PAP at the beginning of each three-year governing term. The ISC appoints the PAP Chair and Vice-Chair.

For more information on the membership and how to apply, please check out the RCF website.

Deadline for applications is 20 September 2020.