Publications on People Who Inject Drugs (PWID)

This technical brief describes how interventions for people who use drugs are to be incorporated into funding requests to the Global Fund. The Global Fund is the major source of international funding in low-and middle-income countries for harm reduction, and it supports evidence-based interventions aimed at ensuring access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support for all key populations, including people who use drugs.

Presented in six separate booklets, the World Drug Report 2020 provides a wealth of information and analysis to support the international community in implementing operational recommendations on a number of commitments made by Member States, including the recommendations contained in the outcome document of the special session of the General Assembly on the world drug problem, held in 2016.
 

This document is based on currently available scientific evidence on treatment for drug use disorders and sets out a framework for the implementation of the Standards, in line with principles of public health care. The Standards identify major components and features of effective systems for the treatment of drug use disorders. They describe treatment modalities and interventions to match the needs of people at different stages and severities of drug use disorders, in a manner consistent with the treatment of any chronic disease or health condition.

This guide is aimed at those who work with and advocate for women who use drugs in all their diversity. It equips them with practical, evidence-based interventions which will help advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of women who use drugs. 

Community-led organizations are led by the people who they serve and are primarily accountable to them. In the AIDS response, this includes organizations by and for people living with HIV or tuberculosis and organizations by and for people affected by HIV, including gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, prisoners, sex workers, transgender people, women and young people.

Communities make an invaluable contribution to the AIDS response. Communities of people living with HIV, of key populations—gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, sex workers, prisoners, transgender people and prisoners—and of women and young people lead and support the delivery of HIV services, defend human rights, support their peers. Communities are the lifeblood of an effective AIDS response and an important pillar of support.

With the Ministerial Declaration of March 2019 having ostensibly set the direction of international drug policy for the next decade or so,1 the launch of the 2019 World Drug Report only three months later was arguably surrounded by less expectation than the year before. Then, while missing the opportunity to provide a review of progress made in the 10 years since the Political Declaration,2 its contents still had the potential to feed directly into the deliberations surrounding the UN’s latest soft law instrument pertaining to drugs.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) Strategic Plan 2018–2021 and its HIV, Health and Development Strategy 2016–2021 highlight the role UNDP can play in supporting governments to attain the SDGs. This includes addressing the structural barriers and discriminatory laws, policies and practices that marginalize vulnerable population groups, including people who use drugs. In June 2015, UNDP released a discussion paper reviewing the impacts of drug enforcement policies on public health, safety and security, and human rights of poor and marginalized populations.