News and Announcements

Harm Reduction International at the 61st Commission on Narcotic Drugs 2018

01 March 2018

The Commission for Narcotic Drugs presents an important opportunity to increase support for harm reduction and human rights in the international drug policy system. This year, Harm Reduction International will be using this opportunity to shape preparations for the 2019 High Level Segment and to begin planning with key governments and allies on… Read more

HR19 Host City Announced as Porto, Portugal

22 February 2018

Abaixo para a versão portuguesa Harm Reduction International (HRI) and Agência Piaget para o Desenvolvimento (APDES) are delighted to announce that the 26th Harm Reduction International Conference – HR19 – will be held in Porto, Portugal from 28 April to 1 May 2019. For international visitors, this conference will be a unique opportunity to… Read more

69 years later, we’re still arguing for the right to life

17 December 2017

This article was originally published on Medium. The original can be found here. Gen Sander, Human Rights Analyst, Harm Reduction International Alireza Madadpur, a young man with no criminal record from a poor family, was executed for drug offences in Iran last summer. Scraping to make ends meet, Alireza agreed to a cleaning job offered… Read more

Why Harm Reduction Is Crucial to the Fight Against HIV

01 December 2017

This article was first published by Open Society Foundations. The original may be found here . Earlier this fall, an international team of researchers sounded a grim warning about the state of the global HIV epidemic among people who inject drugs. In two long-awaited research papers published in the Lancet, they laid out the evidence that not… Read more

Comprehensive Actions Against the Death Penalty for Drug Offences

20 June 2017

There is a clear, longstanding and worldwide trend towards the restriction or abolition of the death penalty. Yet, the number of countries expanding the application of the death penalty to include drug offences has increased. Indeed, between 1979 and 2015, the number of countries prescribing the death penalty for drugs increased from around 10 to… Read more

Harm Reduction International launches new report on harm reduction funding in the European Union

05 May 2017

On April 25th, HRI launched our new report ‘Harm Reduction Investment in the European Union’ at the Leopold Hotel in Brussels. Despite Europe being home to several countries with a long history of harm reduction implementation, our report highlights funding crises in several EU states that are crippling harm reduction services. The launch… Read more

Harm Reduction Investment in the European Union: Current funding, challenges and successes

24 April 2017

Europe is the birthplace of harm reduction, and the region where the successes of this approach in averting epidemics can be most plainly seen. It includes harm reduction champion countries, that have long invested in their national harm reduction programmes and implement a wide array of interventions. However, austerity, international donor… Read more

HRI at the Sixtieth session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs

10 March 2017

Harm Reduction International is participating in the 60 th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which takes place in Vienna from 13 th to 17 th March 2017. Read our full CND briefing. This is the first full CND meeting since the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs (UNGASS) in June 2016. There, member… Read more

Harm Reduction Works! Sharing research on resourcing harm reduction in Europe with local and national stakeholders

18 January 2017

Harm Reduction International is calling for a redirection of funding from drug enforcement to harm reduction. But in order to identify how much funding is needed for harm reduction in any one… Read more

People who inject drugs left behind, HRI warns UNAIDS chief

25 July 2016

For the second time in a month, Harm Reduction International has written to UNAIDS , the organisation tasked with leading the global HIV response, to voice growing concern that people who use drugs are being left behind. The latest letter to the UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibe, warns that a recent decision to withhold funds pledged… Read more