(A commentary)
The issues of children and young people who use drugs, parental drug use, and children’s involvement in the drug trade are many and extremely complex. No one paper can do justice to these complexities. But our analysis of article 33 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) may be summarised with the following broad conclusions:
There Are Two Substantive Protections in Article 33
1. Appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties. This involves not just one level of protection (i.e. primary prevention) but four:
- Reduction of initiation
- Protection of children currently using drugs (recreationally, problematically etc.)
- Protection from drug use in the family (especially parental drug use)
- Protection from drug use in the community
2. Appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances as defined in the relevant international treaties.
‘Appropriateness’ frames both substantive protections and itself may be broken down into a series of five broad principles.
Appropriate measures must be:
- Read alongside the remaining articles of the CRC (in particular the General Principles)
- Read in the light of other provisions of international law which provide greater protection
- Address patterns of vulnerability including a gender perspective
- Evidence-based (i.e. not arbitrary)
- Proportionate
The ‘relevant international treaties’ play what may be called a ‘subjective’ role (describing the substances captured by the article), rather than a normative one (determining what measures are ‘appropriate’ for the purposes of article 33).
‘Relevant international treaties’, as they apply to children, must be read alongside the CRC. The relationship between the CRC and ‘other relevant treaties’ indicates that the CRC is open in terms of the larger policy paradigm adopted to ‘protect’ children or define ‘illicit’ use, production and trafficking.
200. Since the CRC was drafted we know much more about risk factors for drug use, dependence and drug related harms. We know more about what is effective and ineffective in terms of prevention, treatment and harm reduction, and which groups of children are more at risk and why. We know more about children’s involvement in the drug trade and the myriad factors contributing to this phenomenon. And we know much more about child rights-based approaches to multiple social issues. Still, not enough attention has been paid to articulating a child rights-based approach to drug policies and to the many issues children face in relation to drugs and the drug trade. This is true of the CRC Committee, governments and civil society organisations.
It is time now to take child rights more seriously in drug control, and drug control more seriously in child rights.
