The Drugs and Development Hub is
effectively a way to bring parallel
discussions of drug policy and
development policy into one room and to
try to build a network around that. So I
think that the help is really important
in order to sort of reframe and rethink
the drug issue in general. It's a new
initiative based on the recognition that
the development debate
internationally on drugs and crime is
somehow working in silos. The drug
problem globally, it's a health issue, it's
an environmental issue, it's a poverty
issue, it's a peace issue. In the course
of a year you will find a lot of drug
policy meetings but you will also have a
lot of crime related meetings but very
little exchange between those two areas.
If we want to have inclusive drug policy
we should be talking to them and working
together. I think the Drugs and
Development Hub is important because it
aspires to rethink the way we do things,
come forward with new approaches. It's
activating the networks that are already
existing and pulling in our own
resources to support these responses.
What we want to say here is that we want
to add a development perspective on the
whole problem. It's about joint
building of alternative livelihoods
with the communities. It's also a
long-term process. So try to bring disparate
actors from the crime sector, from the
development sector, from the drug sector,
health sector, human rights, whatever it
is and try to get them discussing this
topic on a similar plane in a similar
language. So what we actually have here
in Bogota is a first meeting of the hub
jointly with the Universidad de los
Andes to bring together those two
different communities from government,
from civil society, from academia, from
affected communities, to discuss those
issues jointly for the first time. Our
role is to build these bridges, to find
the good actors everywhere, right? It's
not easy, it takes time but we've been
successful in some interventions and
that really gives us hope on the
this project. This means that we don't
have all the answers,
we have to find them, we have to put
people together to discuss it and that's
what we're trying to do here.
