Across the world, women who use drugs endure intersecting forms of discrimination related to gender, drug use, HIV status, mental health conditions, and other factors. They are denied basic rights to equality and non-discrimination, life, the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, family, information, privacy, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. While these fundamental rights are espoused in different international treaties, scant attention has been paid to the millions of women who use drugs worldwide, who suffer from criminalization, stigmatization, and marginalization by political, legal, and medical actors, as well as by society as a whole. This situation is particularly egregious in the Russian Federation, whose drug policy is highly punitive, as will be discussed in this report.
Through an in-depth analysis of the relevant human rights standards and interpretations of those standards, this report aims to assist advocates and stakeholders in the human rights system in addressing the multiple human rights violations of women who use drugs. Specifically, it examines the intersectional discrimination suffered by women who use drugs; the need for a public health, rather than a punitive, approach to drug policy; the link between drug dependence and mental health conditions; and the importance of a gender sensitive response to drug dependence that accounts for reproductive health, pregnancy, and relations with children.
Routine mistreatment and neglect of women who use drugs violates virtually every major human rights treaty, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),1 the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),2 the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),3 the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT),4 the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),5 the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).6 As the following sections will show, protection of basic rights is not only consistent with international law, but also with good medical practice and scientific evidence.
