The 1st Regional Conference in East Africa was held 10-11th February 2016. After years of preparation the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drugs Problem took place in New York, April 19-21, 2016. The meetings was an important milestone in assessing the progress of the Plan of Action and the goals to be reached by 2019. In the UNGASS outcome paper member states recognized that “tangible progress has been achieved in some fields, the world drug problem continues to present challenges to the health, safety and well-being of all humanity, and we resolve to reinforce our national and international efforts and further increase international cooperation to face those challenges”.
The outcome document offers a strategy for an effective drug policy, but only if words are put into action. Many of the interventions that are described in the outcome document are not implemented for different reasons, it is for example estimated that only one out of six that are addicted to drugs have access to treatment, and in many regions of the world treatment is even less available. It is time that we turn the words into action and start implementing what the global community promised, we don’t need more words – we need action.
WFAD therefore hosted a conference in Nairobi to analyze the outcome document to be able to explore ways use it to create better system around treatment and prevention on a local level. The program will consisted of three main areas;
· Analysis of the outcome document from UNGASS, what did your government promise, and how can we from the civil society use the document?
· Prevention, UNODC has developed the International standards on Prevention, what can we learn from them? We will also have practical examples on implementation of the standards in the region.
· Recovery; how can we enable people to move from problematic drug use to be a contributing member of society?
The Forum gathered 75 people from the region.
The second day of the conference was exclusively for WFAD members and the main aim was to explore ways to work together, it was an interactive work shop for the organizations with a wish for a closer cooperation with other members of WFAD.
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