Press releases

Acquittal in Spanish coca leaf legal case

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 08:59:03 +0000

BARCELONA - Yesterday the unprecedented resolution of a court case for the importation of coca leaf powder (also known as mambe) took place at the Provincial Court of Girona. F.T., a Colombian citize ...

Joint statement

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 11:30:57 +0000

Exactly one year ago, in the 59th session of the CND, the Colombian government urged the international community to openly debate the results obtained during the 50 years of the war on drugs (in the ...

New Report Offers Strategies for Regulating Cannabis in Ways that Uphold and Modernize International Law

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 08:40:21 +0000

As an increasing number of jurisdictions consider whether and how to legalize and regulate access to cannabis, tensions are growing between these initiatives and countries’ obligations under the UN d ...

New report: UN stuck in denial over cannabis regulation

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 23:00:00 +0000

The current trend towards legal regulation of the cannabis market has become irreversible and requires an urgent dialogue by UN member states on the best models for protecting people’s health and saf ...

Time for UN to open up dialogue on drug policy reform and end counter-productive blame-game

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:00:01 +0000

As the UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) launches its annual report on Tuesday, 4 March, amidst an unprecedented crisis in the international drug control regime, leading drug policy ref ...

Uruguay’s pioneering cannabis regulation marks the tipping point in the failed war on drugs

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 12:24:15 +0000

Uruguay’s senate voted today (10 December) to approve the world’s first national legal framework regulating the cultivation, trade and consumption of cannabis for medical, industrial as well as recre ...

Uruguay establishes the basis for a new paradigm in drug policy

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 11:25:50 +0000

The signatory organisations below wish to congratulate the Uruguayan Deputies and Senators that have voted in favour of the law regulating marijuana, and the organisations that have been pushing for ...

Open letter to Ministers Responsible for Public Security in the Americas

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:00:08 +0000

We, the undersigned human rights organizations, address you on this Fourth Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Public Security (MISPA) to follow up on the call upon governments to revise the orienta ...

Uruguay steps forward with Marijuana legalisation vote

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 12:34:08 +0000

The bill will now be taken up in Uruguay’s Senate—where the governing Frente Amplio coalition also holds a majority—and could soon arrive on the desk of President José Mujica, who has supported the p ...

Colombian President Santos, OAS Chief Insulza to present new study on drug policy alternatives

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:16:14 +0000

This Friday, May 17, in Bogotá, Colombia, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will present Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos with the outcomes of the hemi ...

Bolivia wins a rightful victory on the coca leaf

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:04:53 +0000

Today the Plurinational State of Bolivia can celebrate a rightful victory, as the country can become formally a party again to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, but without being bound by ...

Latin American members of the International Drug Policy Consortium call for new approaches to drug control strategies

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 09:23:10 +0000

In this declaration, organizations based in or working on Latin America and members of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) claim the democratic and sovereign right of their countries to m ...

The UN International Narcotics Control Board Releases 2011 Annual Report

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which monitors implementation of the global drug treaties, has trained its fire on Bolivia, this time accusing the country of threatening the in ...

Nieuwe publicatie van het Transnational Institute raadt de regering af khat te verbieden

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:14:28 +0000

De engelstalige briefing Chewing over Khat Prohibition rekent af met de effectiviteit van een ban, zoals is gebleken uit andere Europese landen. Problematisch gebruik hangt nauw samen met andere soci ...

Bolivia Withdraws from the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:50:26 +0000

The Bolivian government formally notified the UN Secretary General of its withdrawal from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended by the 1972 Protocol) yesterday. The withdrawal will ...

The U.S. Can Still Correct its Position on Bolivia's UN Coca Chewing Amendment

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 09:22:39 +0000

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Andean Information Network (AIN), and more than 200 other concerned organizations and individuals yesterday sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State ...

The U.S. Moves to Block Bolivia’s Request to Eliminate U.N. Ban on Coca Leaf Chewing

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:07:56 +0000

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) have learned that the United States is moving to oppose, as soon as this week, Bolivia’s formal request to remove t ...

Study reveals alarming pattern in imprisonment for drug crimes in Latin America

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:32:13 +0000

A comparative study on the impact of drug policies on the prison systems of eight Latin American countries – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay – reveals that dr ...

Major Study on Drugs Laws and Prisons in Latin America to be Released

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:04:09 +0000

An unprecedented one-year comparative study of the drug laws and prison systems in eight Latin American countries - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay - will be r ...

WOLA and Prodh Publish Report of Human Rights Violations in Ciudad Juarez

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:17:01 +0000

Residents in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, are caught between the drug-related violence and the human rights violations committed by the security forces, concludes a report published today by the Washington ...