DRUG USERSÂ INTERNATIONAL
INPUD
Building a Global Movement: Documenting Its Rich History Dr. Jay Levy, Deputy Director, INPUD Establishing and building a drug user
In 1981, the first drug user group was
rights movement is a process
established in the Netherlands. Since
undertaken in huge adversity: people
then, networks of people who use
who use drugs the world over are
drugs have sprung up all over the
criminalised, stigmatised, and socially
world, with the drug user human rights
excluded. Human rights are
movement growing at an astounding
endemically violated. People who use
rate, given the context in which people
drugs experience discrimination, social
who use drugs must organise. The
exclusion, rejection, drug shaming,
burgeoning movement has grown
defamation, violence, and exclusion
from strength to strength, has faced
from service and healthcare provision.
barrier after barrier, exclusion after exclusion. These networks and
In this context, forming networks and
movements, coming together both
organisations that represent
informally and formally, representing
communities of people who use drugs
people who use drugs in all their
faces almost inconceivable barriers;
diversity, have come together not only
inconceivable but not insurmountable.
to demand an end to violations of human rights, an end to stigmatisation and social exclusion, but fundamentally to ensure the inclusion of their voice, the meaningful involvement of communities of people who use drugs in fora that relate to them. Â
