Statement of Pino Arlacchi,
Under-Secretary-General,
Executive Director,
to the
Opening of the
Forty-fourth Session of the
Commission on Narcotic Drugs
Vienna 20 March 2001
Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,
In June 1998, high-level representatives of over one hundred eighty countries met in New York in a Special Session of the General Assembly devoted to the drug problem.
What made this meeting really "special" was the fact that a comprehensive strategy to reduce both demand and supply of drugs was unanimously approved for the first time by the international community.
Measurable targets in a range of subjects were established. The targets were reinforced by deadlines. And the process was set in motion through agreed plans of action.
The strong consensus behind the decisions was possible only because of some changes in attitude. First of all, the participants put to rest the old practice of finger pointing. No one country or group of countries was to be blamed for the drug problem. It was now everyone's problem, and a common solution was required.
Equally important was a change in attitude about the dynamic of the drug issue. For many years the prevailing view had been that the problem was constantly getting worse -- that there were perhaps not really any solutions. There was now a shared conviction that the direction could be reversed.
In the next few days you will have the task of determining whether progress is, in fact, being made, on the basis of the reports you have submitted on achievements in the first two years.
By the time the initial deadline for submission of your reports was reached, there had been very little response. The deadline was extended, and by November reports had come in from eighty-one governments.
At first glance, the low level of response was unsatisfactory.
At the same time, we recognize that this was the first attempt to use the questionnaire that had been developed. This fact may account for some of the shortfall. I am confident that the rate of return will be better next time and look forward to the outcome of your debate on how to improve the reporting methodology.
It is your responsibility to make a judgment as to whether you as governments are on course to meet the commitments you made. I will only offer a few observations.
The findings show a mix of positive and negative elements.
Let us look at some concrete examples. Sixty-seven governments out of the eighty-one that responded now have a national drug strategy or master plan. When we undertook an informal analysis in the mid 1990s, we found only around thirty worldwide.
Well over fifty governments have already incorporated the Guiding Principles of Drug Demand Reduction into their national drug strategies. This is a good indication that progress is being made towards reaching the 2003 target that was set for this.
Looking towards the 2008 target of measurable reduction in drug demand, the mixture of positive and negative is again evident. In fact, the results of the Special Session encouraged long-term trends already under way. Heroin use has stabilized in Europe and is declining in some countries. In this region, the average age of addicts is increasing, confirming that young people are hesitating to start the use of heroin. In contrast, heroin addiction continues to increase in large parts of Asia.
Cocaine abuse has decreased and now stabilized in the United States. But it is still growing in Europe and in parts of Latin America. Synthetic drugs also show a mixed picture. After a decade of growth, abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants seems to have stabilized in several Western European countries. In East and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, it is sharply increasing.
The Special Session set a deadline of 2008 for elimination or significant reduction in illicit cultivation of narcotic crops. This was considered a very ambitious target, and the approval of this component of the strategy was surrounded by a lot of scepticism on the part of public opinion.
Today we can say that the achievements so far are beyond our own expectations. Bolivia, for example, has virtually eliminated the coca bush from the Chapare and has an overall decrease of over ninety per cent in illicit cultivation compared to 1997. Peru can point to a decrease of more than fifty percent during the same period. The area under cultivation in the two countries combined is at the lowest level since 1986. Despite an increase in Colombia, the total production of coca in the three countries is now twenty per cent lower than in the early 1990s.
Progress against illicit opium poppy is also encouraging. Since the Special Session, Pakistan and Viet Nam have become virtually poppy- free, and Lao PDR has launched a programme that will achieve the same result in the year 2005, well before the 2008 deadline. These countries will join the list of those which had already eliminated illicit poppy in the past fifty years, notably India, China, Turkey, Iran, Thailand and Lebanon.
There has also been a decline of cultivation in Myanmar. I believe that we could succeed fully in Myanmar once we can apply large-scale alternative development measures.
By 1999, over three-quarters of the world's illegal opium came from Afghanistan. We have maintained a presence in that country, now limited to regular surveys of poppy cultivation.
We have also worked closely with regional groups, notably the Economic Cooperation Organization B ECO B and the Six plus Two, to try to limit the damage from Afghan opium by blocking it as close as possible to the source.
The countries around Afghanistan are paying a high price. Three thousand drug law enforcement officers have died in Iran in the past ten years. Heroin addition has exploded not only in Pakistan and Iran, but is now threatening Central Asian countries.
We work with all these countries, and there have been some important achievements. With a small technical assistance effort by UNDCP in support of drug law enforcement in Tajikistan, we have seen heroin seizures in that country jump to nearly one thousand nine hundred kilos during 2000.
Last July, the Taliban declared a ban on opium poppy cultivation for the 2000/2001 growing season. We sent an advance survey team to Afghanistan last month to see if the ban had been enforced. The team visited more than eighty per cent of last year's growing areas, including the two main provinces of Helmand and Nangarhar. The team found little or no poppy.
The final result will only be known once the full surveys are carried out towards the end of the growing season. But there is every reason to suspect that there will be a major decrease in cultivation in Afghanistan this year.
Any decline in opium production is good news. On the other hand, the record crops in Afghanistan in recent years have created large stocks capable of satisfying world demand for a couple of years. Therefore the impact of this development on the global heroin supply will be felt with some delay and only if the ban is sustained over several seasons. In the meantime, we are already seeing a large increase B up to twenty times B of opium prices in Afghanistan. This means that the current decline of the production in Helmand and Nangahar is not being compensated by new cultivation elsewhere.
The situation in Afghanistan is complicated by the serious drought affecting the country. We are especially concerned about the situation in Helmand Province. The sudden absence of income from poppy, when combined with the drought and the poor condition of irrigation infrastructure, is creating a humanitarian disaster.
We are working with interested countries in the region and with the donor community, to help provide emergency assistance to the farmers who depended on income from poppy. I appeal to all of you to support this initiative, which we can discuss in more detail during the Operational Segment next week.
Returning to the subject at hand, I will address progress since the Special Session on one additional priority area, that of money laundering. By 2003 all states are committed to adopt anti-money- laundering legislation. Most of the eighty-one governments reported such legislation to be already in place.
On the other hand, eleven per cent did not yet have anti-money- laundering legislation. I suspect that figure is even higher among the states which did not report.
This comes at a time when the volume of funds being laundered has reached unprecedented levels. Individual cases involve amounts greater than the GDP of many countries. Money laundering cannot be controlled if there remain any jurisdictions where criminals can hide their money.
Let us mention two significant developments. As part of a process we launched at a meeting in the Cayman Islands in March of last year, thirty-three offshore banking jurisdictions have officially communicated to me their commitment to bring their legislation up to international standards of financial transparency. Our Global Programme against Money-Laundering is providing assistance where needed.
This initiative is based on our conviction that a constructive engagement with offshore jurisdictions is the course of action most likely to produce the desired results.
The new Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, signed in Palermo in December, will be of great assistance in the fight against money-laundering. States will no longer be allowed to use bank secrecy as a reason for withholding evidence in cases of international organized crime. I take this opportunity to invite all of your countries to ratify the Palermo Convention at the earliest possible date.
Time does not permit me to address the other targets set by the Special Session. I look forward to your own assessment of progress to date on all of them.
Allow me now to stress one important point. You are well aware that the interplay between supply and demand of drugs is a delicate one. Success in the elimination of illicit crops will have an impact on demand. But it will not on its own eliminate demand. We must ensure that our successes in reducing supply are matched by proportionate steps in reducing demand. Hence my invitation to all countries to be more pro- active domestically and internationally in this direction.
UNDCP needs a strong indication by this Commission to focus more on demand reduction. The time has come to invest more energy and funds towards the objective of reducing the number of abusers of all drugs if we want to fully achieve a balanced approach and shared responsibility. Too few countries have adopted up until now the fifty percent target in demand reduction within the ten-year period.
We should bear in mind that those who abuse natural drugs are not necessarily the same people who abuse synthetic drugs. They do not simply switch to synthetic drugs when supplies of natural drugs decrease. These are basically two pools of demand and call for different approaches. The control of ATS and their precursors takes on even greater importance in view of this fact.
Turning to our Programme and to its relationship with you as its governing body, it seems to us that your expectations about the work of UNDCP go well beyond the provision of technical assistance. We should not simply replicate what Member States are doing at the bilateral level. In addition to being your Secretariat, we can further develop our capacity to provide a global view on the drug problem; to produce a neutral set of data and analysis; to help you establish priorities; and to undertake innovative initiatives. Our ambition is to be the software of the international drug control effort; a software always at the disposal of its creators and owners, the Member States of the United Nations.
Mr. Chairman, there will be more reports on these subjects when we go into the Operational Segment next week. Now please allow me to make some concluding remarks.
As you know, UNDCP grew in strength and visibility during the past few years in parallel to the results achieved as a follow-up to the 1998 Special Session. In particular, we managed to improve our project delivery rate even further last year. This was a consequence of earlier decisions to decentralize greater authority to our field offices.
Some months ago, we started a process to further improve the productivity of the Organization. The core element of this exercise is a substantial delegation of authority here at Headquarters.
We have already made a number of changes over the past six months, on the basis of an internal consultative process. The first stage of this exercise was concluded last week. We now have two deputy positions: a Deputy Director General and a Deputy Executive Director of ODCCP with a full representational capacity, and the authority to run the Organization when I am not here. Three D-2 posts are being advertised in order to have a full-fledged management team at the top of UNDCP. We introduced a new funding policy and a programme and project committee to ensure that all projects match your priorities and fall within available resources. Our objective is full transparency as well as clarity of lines of authority. All managers of the Organization have now larger responsibilities in personnel, operational and financial matters.
Turning briefly to the budget revision for the current biennium and the outline for the next budget of the Fund of UNDCP, I would like to address at this stage only one point related to our financial situation.
We continue to face difficulties because of the high proportion of contributions that are earmarked for specific projects. We have reorganized our activities in line with the outcome of the Special Session. We have reduced the number of projects to provide better focus. We continue to receive generally high marks from you on the implementation of our technical cooperation work. Yet there remain areas where we are unable to ensure continuity to important projects, or to face emergencies or new situations, because of the shortage of general purpose funds.
This is an issue for the Operational Segment to take up. It is closely related to the question of governance by the Commission over the Fund of UNDCP. I would like to assure the Commission that UNDCP welcomes any steps towards more effective governance over its work.
We will distribute some guidelines on the use of general purpose contributions. These guidelines are being provided to follow up the discussion of last week during the inter-sessional meeting of the Commission.
But let us be absolutely clear on this issue. The vast majority of general purpose resources are allocated to the support budget. This budget is vital to ensure that we achieve the results you expect from us in a timely and professional manner.
The biennial support budget comes to around thirty-five million dollars. The Commission is called upon to approve this budget, which is funded partly by support cost charges of some seven million dollars. The rest of the budget must be covered from general purpose resources. Only five governments provide seventy per cent of these contributions.
Once the support budget is covered, there remains on average only between four and five million dollars for use in projects that do not attract earmarked contributions. This is the only part of the budget subject to some form of discretion.
The allocation of this small amount of money is decided on the basis of several criteria:
While I assure you of my commitment to transparency in allocating these funds, I believe that the Executive Director needs to retain the degree of flexibility necessary to run the Organization.
To conclude, I believe we have to continue our process of change and our process of growth. Almost three years after the Special Session, UNDCP has been implementing a sound strategy with determination and increasing success. We believe that our staff provide very good value indeed for the 90 million US dollar budget that we have at our disposal. There is every prospect that you the Member States and us UNDCP, together, can strengthen the positive trends beginning to emerge in the area of drugs in the twenty-first century. We, together, are showing that there are solutions to the drug problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.