Eric Gutierrez is a Research Associate at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy. Eric broke the ice in getting some major UK development NGOs to address drug policy issues, and to make the case that illicit drug crop production in the most marginalised and conflict-affected borderlands requires development interventions and is not simply a law enforcement problem.
In 2015, he authored the report “Drugs and Illicit Practices: Assessing their Impact on Development and Governance”, published by Christian Aid.
Since then, he has conducted research across four illicit drug crop producing countries – Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Bolivia – to fully investigate the global illicit drug trade’s extraordinary resilience to prohibition, which is consolidated in his PhD study “Criminals Without Borders: Resilience and Interdependency in Opium and Coca Commodity Chains”, submitted to Erasmus University’s International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.
Eric has worked in policy research positions for three international NGOs in the past 20 years, and has been based in the Philippines, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, South Africa, the UK, and in Germany, where he currently resides.