SHAPING HUMANE DRUG POLICIES IN GHANA: A PROGRESS REPORT BY MARIA-GORETTI ANE

The drug policy debate is beginning to take shape in Ghana. What is fundamental is that the country’s policymakers have begun to put the debate on drug policy into practice and are making significant progress in developing and enforcing better drug laws.

Ghana is currently on the verge of decriminalising marijuana use to enable people who use drugs to freely access treatment. This was disclosed during the launching of a new report by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) , which listed Marijuana as the most abused substance in West Africa. According to the report, only one out of 18 of problematic drug users gets help as a result of the criminalization. Deputy Minister of Interior, James Agalga also gave hints that a bill will soon be presented to Parliament to address the issue on the decriminalising of marijuana.

Mr. Agalga also added that the current situation where only one out of 18 people receive treatment for suffering from problematic drug use is worrying and must be reversed.
This progressive move can be to the advocacy work carried out by the Ghana Chapter of the West Africa Drug Policy Network in 2015. The Networks’ success can largely be attributed to the capacity building support from International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI).

In June 2015, the Ghana Chapter of the drug policy network organised a stakeholders dialogue with sponsorship from the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) to commemorate the world drugs day and also to launch the "Support Don’t Punish" Campaign in the country. With the support of WACSI, this dialogue brought together stakeholders from civil society working to promote harm reduction, government institutions notably the Narcotics Control Board, Ministry of Interior, religious institutions, lawyers, ex-drug users and the media.

The main objective of the forum was to raise awareness among the major stakeholders on the critical need to stop criminalizing people for using drugs in Ghana.

The forum triggered discussions aimed at ensuring that the current Narcotics Control Bill in the country promotes the rights of people who use drugs and supports their rehabilitation, reintegration into society rather than being an enforcer of harsh sanctions that would devalue the usefulness of people who use drugs to society.

After the June 26th celebration, there was a need to meet with policy makers, notably parliamentarians, for civil society to provide some recommendations. A 3-day workshop of the Ghana Chapter of the West Africa Drug Policy Network and the Parliamentary Committee on Interior and Defence, with sponsorship from the Open Society Foundation grant (OSF), was organised from 4th-7th December 2015. This saw a breakthrough as harm reduction was accepted by the legislators as a critical aspect that needs to be included in the draft bill currently before parliament.

During this meeting, legislators admitted how beneficial and educative the workshop had been and expressed the need for more of such enlightening meetings. They admitted that civil society plays an instrumental role as government’s watchdog. In June same year, the network received about $5,000 from OSIWA through WACSI to carry out some advocacy programmes in the country. The Ghana Chapter organised its first ever media workshop for about 20 journalists in the country, engaged and conducted public awareness campaigns on the gaps within Ghana’s current drug laws, drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction as the engagement also sought to raise awareness for the SUPPORT DON’T PUNISH campaign and the consequences of the repressive drug laws on Ghanaians.

The network also developed a documentary entitled “SUPPORT DON’T PUNISH” which emphasised the need to give drug users the opportunity to seek treatment and rehabilitation instead of the continuous criminalization which only exacerbate their problem.

Beyond Ghana, multi-sectorial meetings were also organised in three countries, Benin, Ghana, and
Senegal and this led to a regional consultation in Ghana. The meetings were convened by WACSI, with support from OSIWA.

The regional consultation brought together over forty-one participants from eleven (11) West African
countries; Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Guinea, Guinea-
Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia.
Participants were drawn from relevant sectors including Ministries of Health, Interior, Justice, Foreign Affairs, National Inter-Ministerial Committees (IMC) on Drug Control, National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies, Police, National Human Rights Institutions, legal practitioners, commissioners of WACD and regional organisations, ECOWAS and UNODC, members of the West Africa Drug Policy Network in Ghana and civic activist

The meeting created an excellent opportunity for the countries to take a position as a sub-region for
UNGASS 2016 meeting. The deliberations climaxed with an acknowledgement by stakeholders that,
there is the need to take stringent measures to curb drug trafficking across the region. Participants
further called on governments of West African states to adopt policies to help drug users rather than
punish them.

Drug Policy in Africa-Towards a Human Rights -based Approach

The predominant drug control approach used around the world has been rooted in punitive criminal justice responses, at the expense of human rights and public health – with more resources being spent on police, judges, prosecutors and prisons now than ever before. Today, more people than ever are being imprisoned for producing, trafficking, selling or using drugs, and yet the problems remain unsolved: in the world today, there are more producers and consumers of drugs than ever before. The UNODC has openly identified a number of ‘unintended negative consequences’ of the so-called ‘war on drugs’, including severe human rights violations directly related to the criminalisation and stigmatisation of people who use drugs and vulnerable people involved in illicit drug production and trafficking.

This situation has led Paul Hunt (the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health between 2002 and 2008) to conclude that the UN human rights system and the global drug control regime behaved ‘as though they exist in parallel universes’. Global drug control is based on three international conventions from 1961, 1971 and 1988, which all open with a commitment to promote the ‘health and welfare of mankind’. Yet the 1961 and 1971 Conventions make no reference to human rights, and the term only appears once in the 1988 Convention in the context of crop eradication. As for the current UN human rights system, it dates back to the 1945 UN Charter, which is built on three pillars: human rights, peace and security and development. In Articles 55 and 56, the UN and its member states pledge to promote social development and universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. Three years after the Charter was adopted, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was also approved, outlining 30 universal rights that set ‘a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’. Several decades later, in 1981, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (also known as the Banjul Charter) was agreed and has since been ratified by every African country except South Sudan. The Banjul Charter outlines more than 20 rights.

Current drug policies in Africa continue to be very repressive, with the widespread marginalisation and treatment of people who use drugs as criminals, morally weak ‘addicts’ and/or social outcasts; while non-violent low-level drug offenders generally make up the largest share of those sent to the criminal justice system. This approach has often exacerbated human rights abuses, such as ill-treatment and extortion by police, mass incarceration and arbitrary detention, in many cases without trial or due process. In recent years, the media in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone have documented incidents of people who use drugs being killed or injured by police officers during raids.

These issues require urgent redress across Africa. Both ECOWAS and the African Union have developed action plans on drugs which highlight the need to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. This IDPC advocacy note attempts to provide a non-exhaustive overview of how current drug policies violate universal human rights, and what a rights-based approach to drug policy looks like in practice, based on the Banjul Charter. 

You can access the entire advocacy note by following the link below;

http://idpc.net/publications/2017/04/drug-policy-in-africa-towards-a-human-rights-based-approach#.WQDDFi_uSyM.facebook