Capacity Building and Training

Disseminating the Guidelines to affected individuals and communities, people who use drugs, cultivate drugs or are affected by prohibitionist drug policies is essential so they can understand their rights and advocate for change. Sensitising duty bearers to understand the lived experiences of affected individuals is also key to ensuring they act in a way to effect human rights-based drug laws, policies and practices.

Training based on the Guidelines is increasingly being used by international institutions, national governments, NGOs and academic organisations across the world:

• a new training package for newly appointed criminal court judges using the Guidelines was developed by the Albanian Ministry of Justice in partnership with UNDP, OHCHR, Global Drugs & Development Programme of GIZ and HRDP;
• in Nigeria the Guidelines were used as a resource for training criminal justice officers through the African Law Foundation and West African Drug Policy Network;
• OHCHR and NGO Vis Mutop use the Guidelines in Columbia to train ombudspersons and municipal leaders to address conflict arising from eradication;
• the United States used the Guidelines as a tool for professional and civil society training;
• the INPUD published a manual based on the Guidelines to help people who use drugs learn about human rights, removal of punitive policies and community led HIV responses and government accountability for law and policy reform to meet target set out in their manual.