Harm Reduction and Human Rights

Date: 01 December 2011

Abstract

‘Harm reduction’ is a phrase that may be unfamiliar to many in the human rights field despite the fact that its ethos and way of working is very close to it. Based on pragmatism, evidence, and compassion, harm reduction has been often misunderstood, side-lined, and isolated from human rights discourse. This paper shows how harm reduction has made important strides in human rights bodies of the United Nations. However, its application is critically absent anti-narcotics policy despite evidence of grave human rights violations done in the name of the “war on drugs” . The paper concludes that jurisprudence and scholarship around the human rights dimensions of harm reduction will be critical in understanding what works in protecting people from drug-related harms, but what is appropriate and necessary in a democratic society to achieve this legitimate aim

Barrett, Damon and Patrick Gallahue, 'Harm Reduction and Human Rights' (2011) 16, Interights Bulletin, 188.

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