United states. Very productive informals. Many delegations and good spirit of compromise.
Title. Supporting the collaboration of public health and justice authorities …. o pursue alternative measures to conviction or punishment.. NO comments.
PP 1.. no comments.
PP2. Aware that substance use disorders…No comments.
PP3. Recalling GA resolution 69 192. No comments.
PP4. Reminding member states of the possibility etc. No comments
PP5. Noting that these alternative measures. Venezuela concerned about inclusion of “non-violent nature” – not agreed language from 1988 so Venezuela requests deletion.
Japan. supports Venezuela.
Germany. Included on their request Minor and non-violent not redundant. Non violent should get the benefit of such measures.
Venezuela. Understand the rationale but cannot support it. Text of 1988 convention is clear enough in sub para b no alternatives to prison. Measures such as treatment, education rehab etc. for all crimes covered in para 1 of that article. Alternatives included in sub para c and no references to crimes included in para 1. These include those which even under the Palermo Conventions are money laundering. Does not mean using violence but does not mean it is a lesser crime. According to ECOSOC in its comments, these are serious crimes. 1988 Convention does not make any additional distinction for alternatives to prison for non-violent crimes. Makes no reference that would enable us to include non-violent nature.
Japan. Word “minor nature”? don’t understand this.
South Africa. Support deletion of additional phrase. Do away with “minor and non violent nature.”
Cuba. Agree with Venezuela. Would be risky not to include money laundering crimes.
USA. entire purpose was to put non-violent in once. From history of negotiations there would be no reason for the PP at all.
Germany. Want to add that nobody hindering from using alternatives to using alternatives to imprisonment for violent offenders. This resolution wants to introduce something new. We don’t make any progress by only referring to the three conventions.
Egypt. Real essence of negotiations was to put non-violent in at least one. Either we remove it or put it in another ways. Put in “appropriate drug related offences of a minor nature.”
Russia. Support Egypt. Keep the para but without non-violent.
Chair. Park it and come back later.
South Africa. Want to support Egypt proposal. Need to qualify. Can do without this PP.
Chair. park it.
Properly implemented. “scientific”
PP. “recalling that the International drug control conventions”. Adopted without comments.
Recalling that the POA on the International cooperation. Adopted without comments.
recalling resolution 55/12. Adopted without comments
Recalling that WDP. Adopted without comments
Noting that providing for effective alternative measures…. Australia. minor grammatical
Next PP. acceptable
Worldwide efforts to reduce prison overcrowding.
Venezuela. No direct link between reducing prison overcrowding and respect for human rights.
Japan. Supports Venezuela.
USA. Supports amendment. — fair and human treatment of prisoners.
South Africa..what do you mean by “humane”
Russia. Reducing prison overcrowding not the only way to respect human rights. Could be other reasons states do that — budgetary. Can delete para. UW would support deletion.
Egypt. Noting also the provision of a range of comprehensive health services. But flexible.
USA can delete the word “increasing” — “a range of comprehensive health”
Egypt. I thank the USA for this important resolution. I am not sure I am aware of these diversion programmes, what are we talking about?
USA. Diversion refers to sending somebody away from prison to some type of alternative sentence or programme or activity, which could be treatment, home detention, or other alternatives.
Egypt. Here this does not make sense, please take it out.
UK. We would look favourably to keeping diversion techniques here.
Egypt. We are very flexible.
PP “Noting further that some member states…” is approved without comments.
PP “Noting that working together…” is approved without comments.
PP “Noting also that justice and health authorities…” is approved without comments.
Two last PPs are adopted without comments.
Netherlands. We want to come back to the contentious issue of “minor offence”, where we usually means “non-violent. In PP starting “reminding member states with the possibility to provide”, we offer that we insert: “for drug related offences of a minor, usually non-violent, nature”, and delete the PP that is following.
Egypt. We don’t want this to be added here as it does not fit with the Tokyo Rules.
Germany. We are totally in agreement with the Netherlands.
Chair. We will leave these two paragraphs open for now as some work still needs to be done on this.
Brazil. In Brazil we certainly have a big prison overcrowding and this is very much linked to the world drug problem. This can be seen, perhaps not in all countries, but in many, and we could change the reference to human rights. But there is a clear link, and prison overcrowding is a barrier to treating people humanely. We should keep the paragraph that mentions this issue.
Czech Republic. I want to echo my Brazilian colleague. We want to keep some wording on this issue.
Indonesia. We are flexible in this paragraph, we are ok to retain it, but we don’t agree to link it with the human rights issue. Maybe the sentence could stop after “prison overcrowding”.
Russia. We have decided to delete this paragraph, but for the sake of compromise, we can retain it with Indonesia’s proposal.
Venezuela. My delegation observes that the spirit of this resolution is to provide alternatives to prison for minor drug-related crimes. If this is the aim, then it is hard to understand why we go into prison overcrowding and human rights issues in the PPs. The PPs should support the spirit of the resolution. Prison overcrowding is linked many times to incarceration for drug-related crimes, but this is not relevant for this resolution.
USA. We are trying to be flexible for this paragraph and have a suggestion.
Japan. Japan would like to request deletion of this paragraph: prison overcrowding is not in all countries. And secondly, the reason for prison overcrowding is not always for drug offences.
Colombia. I had been avoiding getting into this debate but it is very important. I understand Venezuela’s view that this paragraph is not linked to the issue of this resolution. I suggest that we include the link between worldwide efforts to reduce prison overcrowding through the promotion of alternatives to prison, with increased rehab and reintegration for minor drug-related crimes.
Brazil. We support language offered by the USA. But I continue to say that this is an important point and the link between prison overcrowding and alternatives to incarceration is absolutely clear.
Chair. we need further consultations between ourselves on this PP and the other contentious ones. We will now move to OPs.
Operative Paragraphs
OP1 is adopted without comments.
OP2 is adopted without comments.
OP3 is adopted without comments.
OP4 is adopted without comments.
Venezuela. In OP 5, when we refer to illegal drugs, could we eliminate this and talk about “abuse of drugs”?
Czech Republic. We do not like “abuse of drugs”, prefer “problem drug use”.
USA. We don’t use abuse of drugs. Could the Secretariat advise us?
Secretariat. Drugs are not abused, people abuse drugs.
Venezuela. Two issues worry us here: what do we mean by “illegal drugs”? I thought all drugs subject to international control are legal. And NPS cannot be referred to illicit, no matter what the activity is. It is difficult to use the word illegal when it comes to drugs. Is there a binding instrument that has made drugs illegal? Then we would be ok to add this wording.
UK. The reason to use this broader term is because in some countries, some NPS are illegal, and we want to include these drugs as well, not just the drugs controlled in the UN drug conventions.
Egypt. How about we talk about “on the impact of illegal activities”?
USA. Perhaps we could use “impact on crime and the abuse of drugs”.
Czech Republic. “Abuse” of drugs is unacceptable for us.
USA. Would “misuse” of drugs be acceptable?
Uruguay. We want to refer to alternative measures for minor crimes in the conventions – the conventions already anticipate that they don’t need to be sentenced by criminal penalties and can be sent to treatment or education. We are discussing alternative measures limiting ourselves to minor crimes. We need to include a paragraph referring to this issue.
Chair. Please attend the consultations and discuss this issue. Let’s get back to “misuse” here. There is also a more precise phrase: “the illegal use of currently controlled substances”.
Czech Republic. We would not agree with “illegal use”.
Chair. We then adopt “misuse” as mentioned by the USA.
Egypt. When we talk about treatment, social reintegration programmes, etc., this does not fit here. What do we mean about provision in this paragraph? Change “engagement” with “provision”.
OP5 is adopted.
OP6 is adopted without comments.
OP7 is adopted without comments.
Russia. On OP8: “Recommends” is very strong for such a document. We propose using “Invites member states to consider”.
OP8 is adopted.
OP9 is adopted without comments.
OP10 is adopted without comments.
OP11 is adopted without comments.
Chair. We still have brackets in the preambular paragraph. But since these have no financial implications, I invite the Secretariat to talk about financial implications.
Financial implications. None.
We suspend the meeting for 10 minutes so that all interested parties find a solution for “non violence”, reinstating the paragraph on prison overcrowding. Uruguay will elaborate language for a new paragraph.
USA. We had two issues, one on PP with the “violent” nature: should now say “of a minor, non-violent, nature”.
Chair. It’s amazing what a comma can do! I can see no objection so this paragraph is adopted.
Germany. We wish to thank all the delegations for their flexibility, we are very happy about this solution.
Australia. I want to thank the USA for their good resolution and want to co-sponsor.
Greece. I would like to also thank the USA for this resolution. I would like to add Greece as a co-sponsor.
Uruguay. Simply around our proposal, we have withdrawn our proposal in the interest of flexibility and want to co-sponsor the resolution.
Mexico. we also want to co-sponsor.
Germany. We thank the USA for the marvellous job and also want to co-sponsor the resolution.
Lithuania. We also co-sponsor the resolution.
Draft resolution L8 is adopted at the Committee of the Whole.