Prelims

Half Title

The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women

Title Page

The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women: Shifting the Needle

Edited by

Julia Buxton

University of Manchester, UK

Giavana Margo

Open Society Foundations, USA

Lona Burger

Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, Canada

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Julia Buxton, Giavana Margo, Lona Burger for the editorial matter and selection and © 2021 authors for their respective chapters. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83982-885-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83982-882-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83982-884-3 (Epub)

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and is freely available to read online.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

Chapter 18

Chapter 23

Tables

Chapter 11

Chapter 23

About the Contributors

Aggrey Alluso is a social sciences graduate with over 15 years’ experience of work in advocacy for social and legal reforms and grant making. His focus is to create an enabling ecosystem for sustained (social, political and legal) reforms towards social justice for marginalised groups, using intersectional lenses and rights-based approaches.

Happy Assan is an activist and outreach worker for people who use drugs and those living with HIV. She serves as Executive Director of the Tanzania Network for People who Use Drugs and founded SALVAGE, an organisation aimed at providing services and support to women who use drugs and their children. Her work is motivated by her lived experience of drug use and related stigma and discrimination.

Abdalla Badrus is a Harm Reduction Programme Manager at MEWA (Muslim Education and Welfare Association), a local NGO in Mombasa, Kenya. He has over 20 years’ experience working with People Who Use Drugs (PWUD). He is Co-founder of Muslim Education and Welfare Association (MEWA) Drug Treatment Centre and Harm Reduction Programmes and a Vice Chair of Kenya Harm Reduction Network. He has a higher Diploma in Counselling Studies.

Wilson Box is an activist, practitioner and Projects Executive Director for Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network. He is a fellow of the Open Society Foundations and has undertaken courses on human rights and drug policy reform at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and in Drug Policy Reform, Global Health and Diplomacy at the Graduate Institute of the University of Geneva.

Ailish Brennan is a youth activist working on drug policy, and LGBTQ+ issues, especially focussing on the intersection of these topics. She has completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, International Relations and Economics at University College Dublin, and is currently the Executive Director of Youth RISE.

Judy Chang is the Executive Director of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs and has been a drug user, drug policy and harm reduction advocate since 2015. Additionally, she has a combined 10-year experience in the field of HIV, community health and gender inequality spanning research, advocacy and programming. As a woman who uses drugs, she brings decades of lived experience and personal dedication to the role. She has worked across India, China and Thailand. She holds a Masters in International Development and a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Contemporary Cultures.

Mary C. K. Chepkonga, Rtd, SACP, HSC, OGW, is a Consultant who retired as a Senior Assistant Commissioner of Prisons. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Health Systems Management from the University of Manchester (UK) and worked for 39 years with Kenya Prisons Service. Her main areas of competence and expertise are in drugs, HIV and AIDS, policy development and implementation, programme implementation and coordination, budgeting and work plan formulation, capacity building and donor liaison and fundraising.

Chontit Chuenurah has worked to promote gender-sensitive treatment of women prisoners and support the implementation of the UN Bangkok Rules in Southeast Asia during the past 10 years. As part of her work, she leads several research projects focussing on women’s background and pathways to imprisonment.

Cecilia Farfán Méndez is the Head of Security Research Programmes at the Center for US–Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego. She is an expert on organised crime and US–Mexico security cooperation. Her work has been published in Open Democracy, The Conversation and the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development.

Corina Giacomello is a researcher and consultant on gender, justice and drug policy. Her publications and research focus on women in prison, children with incarcerated parents, women who use drugs and compulsory treatment. Her work is based on empirical research and comparative law, with a focus on Latin America, specifically Mexico.

Louisa Gilbert is an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work and Co-director of the Social Intervention Group and Global Health Research Center of Central Asia. Her research has focussed on advancing syndemic interventions to address gender-based violence, HIV and substance misuse among women who use drugs.

Fiona Gilbertson has over 25 years of advocacy experience in HIV and sex work organisations mainly in policy development and lobbying. She founded Recovering Justice in 2013 believing that the fundamental way to tackle stigma and discrimination is through policy change. They seek peaceful solutions to the war on drugs.

Fatma Jeneby is a clinical anesthetist advocating for rights of people who use drugs in Kenya’s Coastal Region. She has been working for the Muslim Education and Welfare Association for the past 13 years with vast experience on designing and monitoring community response to health, harm reduction and rights services.

Zsuzsa Kaló is Assistant Professor in Psychology at the Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She is a linguist and a psychologist. Her primary research interests are female drug use and qualitative drug research methods.

Iga Kender-Jeziorska is a drug policy researcher and activist focussed on harm reduction policies and interventions in East-Central Europe. She serves as a Deputy Director of the Youth Organisations for Drug Action and a member of the core group of the Civil Society Forum on Drugs of the European Commission.

Fiona Macaulay is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. She previously worked at Amnesty International and the Universities of Oxford and London. Her research interests span gender, politics and policy, human rights and reform issues in the criminal justice system and security sector, in Brazil and Latin America.

Daria Matyushina-Ocheret is a public health expert with over 20 years of experience in harm reduction and drug policy. Originally from Russia, she led on community-based research and advocacy projects first in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and more recently on the international level.

Bethany Medley is a current Ph.D. student at Columbia University School of Social Work. She identifies as a person with lived experience of intravenous heroin use and as an advocate for people who use drugs. Her research interests include community-based participatory research with women of reproductive age who use drugs.

Kristine Mendoza is a Filipino Lawyer working for the rights of People Who Use Drugs, People Living with HIV and LGBTIQs. She is a founding member of StreetLawPH, an organisation of lawyers which provides access to justice services for People Who Use Drugs in the Philippines. She studied Political Science and earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She became a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines in 2016.

Ingrid Marcela Muñoz Quesada holds a degree in Natural Sciences from the South Colombia University and is currently studying a Masters in Integral Management of Hydrographic Basins from the National University of La Plata, Argentina. Since 2008, she has accompanied social and campesina organisations in political and social work projects, and she continues to work towards Colombia’s peace and reconciliation process.

Marie Nougier manages the communications/publications of the International Drug Policy Consortium (International Drug Policy Consortium) communications/publications work, while engaging in networking, NGO capacity building and policy advocacy engagement. She helps coordinate a project on women, incarceration and drugs in Latin America and is a Core Group member of the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD) (Civil Society Forum on Drugs). She has an MA in international law, human rights and security.

Luke Okunya Odiemo is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nairobi and a Practitioner in Psychometrics with the Centre for Cognitive Interventions. He has interest in psychological issues relating to community problems and how psychological assessment can be used to design interventions.

Habil Otanga is Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nairobi.

Isabel Pereira holds a Political Science degree from University de Los Andes and a Masters degree in Development Studies, from IHEID, Switzerland. She focusses on the impact of drug policy on rural development, public health and armed conflict. She is currently the Research Coordinator for the Drug Policy area at Dejusticia.

Lucía Ramírez is an attorney specialised in Constitutional Law from Colombia’s Universidad Nacional and has a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago. She has worked in research, teaching, litigation and advocacy on human rights. Currently, she is the Research Coordinator for migration at Dejusticia.

Ariel Richer is an NIH T32 Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Columbia University School of Social Work working within the Social Intervention Group. She focusses on intimate partner violence prevention, drug and alcohol use and HIV/STI risk. She works collaboratively with Black, Indigenous, and Native communities. She is Co-founder and Director of Research and Advocacy of the Urban Indigenous Collective.

Imani Robinson is the Communications Strategist for Release, the United Kingdom’s centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law, and the current editor of TalkingDrugs.org, one of the few multilingual online platforms dedicated to providing unique news and analysis on drug policy, harm reduction and related issues around the world.

Rose supports Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control. Drugs ruined the lives of two of her three sons, then heroin killed them. Her youngest son died when waiting for treatment, while people with him delayed calling 999. Her second son, in recovery, relapsed and died alone.

Anna Ross Anna Ross is a drug policy specialist and community engager who has written her PhD thesis on participation within Scottish drug policy formation. She has a long history of involvement with drug user communities and is a passionate advocate of the human rights underpinning drug policy reform.

Anastacia Ryan is a researcher, advocate and social entrepreneur in promoting the rights of marginalised women globally. Her belief in the need for leadership of marginalised communities led her to establish the sex worker-led project Umbrella Lane, which is now part of a larger project she founded, SISU, which empowers women and girls to build resilience through adversity.

Suzanne Sharkey has been advocaring and campaigning for drug policy reform since 2014. She is Vice-chair of Law Enforcement Action Partnership in the United Kingdom. As a woman in long term recovery from alcohol and other drugs, she knows only too well the inequalities women face and continues to fight these injustices.

April Shaw has almost two decades of experience conducting substance use research in the United Kingdom and Europe. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Glasgow. Using creative qualitative methods, her research explores the concepts of agency and control experienced by mid-life and older women in recovery from illicit drug use.

Ukrit Sornprohm is Project Manager at the Thailand Institute of Justice where he plans, manages and executes research and policy advocacy projects on crime prevention and criminal justice matters including transnational crime and gender equality. He also serves as a special lecturer at several universities in Thailand.

Claudia Stoicescu is a Research Associate at Oxford University’s Centre for Criminology and Department of Social Policy and Intervention and a Visiting Scholar at Atma Jaya University’s HIV/AIDS Research Centre. Her research uses participatory approaches to explore the intersections of HIV, drug use and gender-based violence among marginalised women.

Husein Abdalla Taib is a social worker who has, for the last 20 years, been working with the Muslim Education & Welfare Association – working with people who use drugs at the Coastal Region of Kenya. He is currently the Head of Advocacy for Health and Harm Reduction Services.

Ingrid Walker is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She researches the relationships between drugs, users and social perceptions that inform policy. Her publications include High: Drugs, Desire, and a Nation of Users, and articles, chapters and a TED talk about drug research, normalisation and pleasure.

Coletta A. Youngers is a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and a Senior Associate with the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC). She is an expert on human rights and drug policy in Latin America, and coordinates a project on women, drug policy and incarceration in the Americas.