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What is OSI’s work in the area of harm reduction and human rights?
OSI’s work on harm reduction and human rights is led by the International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD). Examples of harm reduction and human rights projects supported by IHRD include:
- Access to quality information and services
- Support for access to substitution treatment in countries including Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
- The formation of harm reduction networks in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia to help programs exchange information and advocate for change.
- Advocacy at national and international level
- Highlighting the role that incarceration and forced institutionalization play in accelerating the HIV epidemic, and the policy changes that can reduce overcrowding, disease risk, and human rights violation.
- Work with international human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, to ensure that abuses are carefully documented in countries such as Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
- Technical assistance for harm reduction
- Training of police and development of curricula to train law enforcement on how to work effectively without violating the rights of people who use drugs.
- Pairing of local activists and international human rights groups for documentation projects, and analysis of relevant human rights covenants on questions relating to drug use and HIV prevention.
- Community organizing
- Collaboration with leading advocates to ensure that concerns of drug users are represented at the UN Human Rights Council.
- Working with groups such as the European AIDS Treatment Group, the Global Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS, the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition and local community groups to increase HIV treatment literacy and challenge the systematic exclusion of drug users from care.
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