Event | ‘Drug Policies and Development: Conflict or Coexistence?’, 4-5 March 2021, Rabat, Morocco

The 12th volume of the International Development Policy journal explores the links between drug policy and international development goals, both current and within an historical perspective. Contributions address the drugs and development nexus from a range of critical viewpoints, highlighting gaps and contradictions, as well as strategies and opportunities for enhanced linkages between drug control and development programming. Criminalisation and coercive law enforcement-based responses in international and national level drug control are shown to undermine peace, security and development objectives.

The fifteen articles in this volume highlight the detrimental impact of the implementation of drug policies on other global development objectives such as rural development, health, security and poverty eradication, putting the achievement of development goals at risk.

The Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), in partnership with the International Development Policy journal (The Graduate Institute, Geneva), and the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP, Geneva), organized two online events featuring authors of the special issue and experts from the Policy Centre in order to present their findings and discuss current dimensions that shape drug policy.

The authors and experts discussed the intersection of drug control, security and peacebuilding and the impact of drug control on children, women and gender-related issues. The discussions aimed to bring clarity to these complex and multifaceted policy issues.

 

Thursday, March 4th, 2021 (GMT+1)

15h30 – 15h45 Opening remarks
Karim El Aynaoui, President, and Bouchra Rahmouni, Director of Research, Partnerships and Research Valorization, Policy Center for the New South TBC
Khalid Tinasti, Director of the Global Commission on Drug Policy; Fellow at the GSI at the University of Geneva

15h45 – 16h30 Drug policies, Security and Peacebuilding

Chair

Mohamed Loulichki, Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South

Speakers
Peacebuilding and drug war: incompatibilities and contradictions
Julia Buxton, British Academy Global Professor in Criminology at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Associate at the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), Swansea University

Ending the war on drugs in West Africa?
Maria-Goretti Loglo, Legal Practitioner; African Consultant for International Drug Policy Consortium

Misunderstanding African Drug Markets
Jason Eligh, Senior Expert, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
El Mostafa Rezrazi, Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South

16h30 – 17h30 Discussion

Friday, March 5th, 2021 (GMT+1)

15h30 – 16h00 Childhood, Gender, and Drug Policy

Chair
Ugo Panizza, Professor of Economics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Speakers

The Gendered Impacts of Drug Policy on Women: Case Studies from Mexico
Corina Giacomello, Associate Researcher with the University of Chiapas, Mexico

Child rights in global drug policy: From justification to accountability
Damon Barrett, Associate Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Gothenburg; Co-Director, International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy

The evolution of drug policies and its gendered impact on development – a case study of Mauritius
Richard Chelin, Researcher, ENACT Program, Institute for Security Studies

16h00 – 16h50 Discussion

16h50 – 17h00 Closing remarks

Khalid Tinasti, Executive Secretary of the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP)
Bouchra Rahmouni, Director of Research, Partnerships and Research, Valorization, Policy Center for the New South

 

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