A/HRC/10/44
page 22
67. Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur is concerned that, in many countries, persons accused
or convicted of drug-related crimes are subject to other forms of discriminatory treatment in
places of detention, including solitary confinement, special prison regimes and poor detention
conditions. In Indonesia, for example, people convicted of drug-related crimes are held in special
prison regimes, and suspected drug consumers and traders are particularly vulnerable to abuse, as
ill-treatment is frequently used by the police to extract information on drug suppliers58.
Moreover, in many cases, their detention and/or forced treatment are not subject to judicial
review. For instance, at the time of the Special Rapporteur’s visit to China, “enforced drug
rehabilitation” programmes (qianzhi jiedu) were a specific form of administrative detention.59
D. Palliative care/access to pain relief suffers from drug-control barriers
68. Worldwide, millions of people continue to suffer from often severe pain,60 although
already in 1961, the Single Convention, in its preamble, recognized that “the medical use of
narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering and that adequate
provision must be made to ensure the availability of narcotic drugs for such purposes”, and its
articles 4 and 21 further referred to the need for drugs to be available for medical purposes and
the treatment of the sick. At its twentieth special session, the General Assembly, in its Guiding
Principles of Drug Demand Reduction, more firmly declared the commitment of States to ensure
adequate availability of narcotic drugs for the treatment of pain. In its resolution 2005/25 on
treatment of pain using opioid analgesics, the Economic and Social Council recognized the
importance of improving the treatment of pain, including by the use of opioid analgesics, as
advocated by WHO, especially in developing countries, and called upon Member States to
remove barriers to the medical use of such analgesics, taking fully into account the need to
prevent their diversion for illicit use.
69. However, access to narcotic drugs is still severely restricted and sometimes unavailable, in
particular in the global South. WHO notes that “approximately 80 per cent of the world’s
population has either no, or insufficient access to, treatment for moderate to severe pain. This is
true for both developing and industrialized countries. Each year tens of millions of patients suffer
moderate to severe pain without treatment: 0.8 million end-stage HIV/AIDS patients, about
58
A/HRC/7/3/Add.7, paras. 22 and 64; appendix I, paras. 2 and 96.
59
E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6, para. 33, footnote 34. Whereas a new law regulating detention for drug
offences that entered into force in 2008 eliminated the use of re-education through labour,
according to reports received by the Special Rapporteur, compulsory rehabilitation is still
proscribed.
60
See for example World Health Organization briefing note on access to controlled medications
programme, September 2008. See also the report of the International Narcotics Control Board
for 2004 (E/INCB/1999/1), para. 15.
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