Why was the Community of Women who Use Drugs in Bolivia formed?
The Community was born as a collective response to the invisibility, criminalisation, and systematic violence that women who use drugs experience in a deeply patriarchal and punitive context. The Community was formally established in 2023 in collaboration with the platform Programa Libertas de Cochabamba Bolivia, with many participants resisting due to individual experiences of exclusion, imprisonment, and discrimination in healthcare services.
Currently, the Community brings together more than 60 women through a closed national Facebook group, which functions as a safe virtual meeting space and expands territorially through in-person meetings. The constituents are diverse: women deprived of liberty, homeless women, women with challenges linked to substance use, women who use drugs as part of their spirituality or daily lives. The uniting factor is the defence of the right to exist without guilt, without violence and with dignity.
The Community of Women who Use Drugs in Bolivia vision is clear: to fight for the decriminalisation of drug use, from a gender, human rights, anti-racist, and anti-colonial perspective. The collective demands policies that stop criminalising women’s bodies and recognise human rights.
The Community propose:
- Exposing and punishing systematic sexual violence perpetrated by state agents.
- The reform of Law 1008 and the end of the criminalisation of drug use.
- The incorporation of a gender perspective into all harm reduction programs.
- The creation of specialised health centers, managed with the direct participation of women who use drugs.
- The strengthening of feminist and horizontal community networks which position themselves not only as spaces of support but also as political agents of transformation.
What is the current situation in Bolivia regarding harm reduction with a gender perspective?
The Bolivian State and Bolivian society have virtually no knowledge of harm reduction. In Bolivia, drug policy remains heavily focused on punishment and criminal control. Law 1008 criminalises drug use, which has turned many women into “permanent clients” of the judicial system. All women who use drugs, whether recreationally, medicinally, for culinary purposes, or any other purpose, are criminals under Law 1008. Not only is drug use a crime, but also classed as substance abuse disorder, which is a health disorder, not a behavior or practice. Likewise, the prohibitionist policy in Bolivia is very harsh against the autonomy of the bodies of women who use drugs, since they suffer not only sexual extortion but systematic sexual violence in all kinds under police persecution.
Not only are there no public harm reduction programs with a gender focus, but there are no public harm reduction programs of any kind, nor specific protocols for serving women who use drugs in health services. Furthermore, care spaces—when they exist—are riddled with moral, religious, and patriarchal stigmas. Women who use drugs are viewed as “bad mothers,” “irresponsible,” and “dangerous.” This stigma is exacerbated when there are intersections with poverty, racialisation or sex work.
What steps are you taking to ensure that harm reduction programs address discrimination against women who use drugs?
The Community of Women who Use Drugs with the Libertas Program are first promoting the introduction of the harm reduction approach in the country, so that it can be taken into account in public drug policy.
As an initial experience, some feminist harm reduction practices have been developed. Both in-person and virtual meetings are organised where we topics such as self-care, feminism, patriarchy and adult-centrism, the history of the war on drugs, and human rights are addressed. Harm reduction kits have been prepared to adapt to collective realities, which include everything from condoms to hydrating salts, vitamins, and natural infusions.
One of the most recent projects is Cuestionamiento del Pacto Patriarcal entre la Política de drogas y el Sistema Penal” (“Questioning the Patriarchal Pact between Drug Policy and the Penal System”), carried out carried out in collaboration between the Community of Women Who Use Drugs and the Libertas Program. Through this project, structural violence against women who use drugs – especially those who have been incarcerated or live with drug dependence – is highlighted and denounced.
Activities include:
- Art and narrative workshops in safe spaces.
- In-person and virtual meetings to strengthen the community network, which concluded this July
- Production of an audiovisual report with testimonies and proposals for change (in process)
Do you have other comment on your approaches in tackling violence against women who use drugs?
The sexual, institutional, and structural violence experienced has been one of the main reasons for organising. There are cases of colleagues raped by police officers, especially during night operations. This violence is completely invisible, even within movements fighting for drug policy reform. Therefore, the approach has been twofold: visibility and support. In addition to the project “Questioning the Patriarchal Pact between Drug Policy and the Penal System”, work has been undertaken on safe reporting strategies, designing mechanisms for confidential contact and psychosocial and legal support. Women who use drugs know that reporting without protection can be worse, which is why there is a need to create community support channels for and from women.
How do you envision the comprehensive health centers you propose?
Envisioned are comprehensive, intersectional, and stigma-free health centers, where the focus is not on mandatory abstinence, but rather on addressing the multiple dimensions of health: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Spaces that understand that substance use is not synonymous with illness, but that also welcome those facing challenges with their drug use without criminalising it.
These centers would be integrated with harm reduction services, including counselling, therapeutic support, gynaecological care, access to contraceptives, physical training, alternative therapies (such as ancestral medicine, dance, and art), legal support, and community support networks, following the experience of the diversion program carried out by the Libertas Program. These services should incorporate mobile care strategies to reach women experiencing homelessness or deprivation of liberty. More detail about the Community of Women who Use Drugs in Bolivia can be found here.
Please share some background about the Libertas Program
The Libertas Program is a women’s platform formed seven years ago to confront patriarchal violence under prohibitionist drug policy and in the justice system, in Bolivia. The Libertas Program seeks to transform oppressive policies and laws as well as promote critical thinking and social organisation. The specific goal is to modify punitive drug policies that violate human rights, introduce a gender-sensitive harm reduction approach into public policy, and promote access to justice for women criminalised for drug use. The Libertas Program stands alongside women who have been criminalised or marginalised and socially excluded in order to support them in exercising their rights and making their voices heard.
The Libertas Program proposes to:
- Eliminate the legal provision that criminalises drug use.
- Raise awareness of the various forms of violence marked by gender inequality experienced by the diverse range of women who use drugs.
- Strengthen an anti-prohibition movement that promotes a rights-based, harm reduction approach with gender perspective.
- Promote social, educational and health programs to address issues related to drug use, instead of the current criminal response.
- Decriminalise court cases of women who are incarcerated to seek their release.
How does the diversion program function?
It is a harm reduction pilot diversion program to release women who are in prison for quantities of drugs intended for personal use, removing their cases from the criminal system. This experience was initiated in coordination with Andean Action – Bolivia, after having managed to convince some judges of the need to decriminalise.
The Libertas Program facilitates or provides social and health support with a harm-reduction approach and also legal support so that women can be released from prison. Through periodic reports to the courts, the Program aims to ensure that clients remain free until the period established by the judges ends.
In addition, the Libertas Program have developed a judicial action before the Constitutional Court to eliminate the legal provision that penalizes drug use, and has also produced manuals for understanding drug problems and research reports to support the decriminalisation proposal for dissemination to institutions within the justice system, universities and certain sectors of society.
