2014 CND and its High-Level Segment

This year’s 57th Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) took place between 13th and 21st March, and included a High-Level Segment (HLS) like that featured at the 2009 Commission, and was intended as a mid-term review of progress made towards the realisation of the Political Declaration and Plan Action agreed in 2009, and to map the path to the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem. The HLS, following lengthy and often heated discussions, produced a Joint Ministerial Statement (JMS). This statement proved difficult to achieve, with disputes over the use of the death penalty for drugs offences forming the heart of wide-ranging philosophical and political differences. The passages intended to deal with the forthcoming UNGASS were abandoned and included instead in the work of the regular CND, which was left to come up with a resolution accommodating the conflicting positions. 

The final JMS document was largely bland, and repeated wholesale passages from the 2009 Political Declaration. Nonetheless, largely thanks to the efforts of Mexico, recognition of serious drug policy debates taking place around the world was eventually included. Within the debates over the JMS, the emergence of a bloc of like-minded states could be discerned, for which the reform of the international drug control system is of critical, if long-term, importance. Meanwhile – and lending a strange and paradoxical character to the proceedings – for much of the time the CND went about its usual business as though all was perfectly normal.

Real full report here