The side event examined prevalent legal strategies and frameworks utilized by authoritarian regimes in Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) to impede civil society’s role in public health improvement, protection of human rights, and the delivery of life-saving harm reduction services.
Full title of the event, held at the 67th session of the CND was: Tenacity in the shrinking civic spaces: challenges and response of the organizations and activists working on drug policy and health in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Speakers of the session:
Ganna Dovbach (Eurasian Harm Reduction Association) | Introduction
Daniel Joloy (Amnesty International) | Overview of the situation in the CEECA region
Michail Golichenko (HIV Legal Network, Canada) | How the rising trend of laws targeting “foreign agents” across CEECA presents a stark challenge to drug policy reforms
The speech of Anya Sarang (ARF) was cut out due to the safety concerns.
Péter Sárosi (Rights reporter Foundation – Drugreporter) | Shrinking Space for Civil Society in Hungary
Q and A
The session also aimed to showcase the resilience and tenacity exercised by civil society organizations in protecting and maintaining health and human rights services. Over the past several years in various CEECA countries, undemocratic governments have configured and systematically intensified approaches to restrict civil society, including in the areas of drugs, harm reduction, and HIV services, as well as advocacy for evidence-based health and drug policies. The session illuminated how these repressive mechanisms, aimed at diminishing public involvement in health, human rights, and drug policy, are consistently implemented across local, national, and regional levels. These mechanisms include:
- Creating barriers to NGO registration;
- Restricting participation in decision-making bodies on all levels (from local councils to country coordinating mechanisms (CCMs) to ECOSOC);
- Imposing surveillance, interference in NGO activities, and control over programs by state and security organs;
- Labeling NGOs as “foreign agents,” thereby excluding them from local funding and subjecting them to suffocating reporting requirements;
- Constricting NGO’s and individuals’ access to information, knowledge, and scientific progress through the imposition of ‘drug propaganda’ laws and other means to restrict freedom of information and expression;
- Constraining access to funding and technical assistance by prohibiting contact with impactful international organizations (labeled as “undesirable organizations”);
- Depleting already limited NGO’s funds with fines and legal procedures;
- Criminal and administrative prosecution for advocacy, human rights protection, harm reduction services, and information provision.
