Mr. Damon Barrett, LLM (International Centre of Human Rights and Drug Policy)
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is unique among the core UN human rights treaties in containing an article dedicated to drug use and the drug trade. Its influence on the interpretation of international treaties on drug control, and national law, policy and practice has been arguably limited.
Focusing on drug use and dependence, this presentation will look at the normative content of the CRC as it relates to responses to drug use; guidance from the Committee on the Rights of the Child on implementing the CRC at national level; and the application of the ‘general principles’ of the CRC to harm reduction services for legal minors. In doing so it explores the CRC’s potential to influence on responses to drugs in law, policy and practice.
Damon is a co-founder and director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy (HR-DP), based at the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, where he is a visiting fellow. Damon is a member of faculty for the summer schools on human rights and drug policy at the Central European University in Budapest and Jodhpur National University, and a visiting lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, Galway. He is an editor-in-chief of Human Rights and Drugs (the official journal of HR-DP), and the author of ’A Commentary on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Article 33, Protection from Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances’ (Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, 2011). He obtained his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights.
Damon was a civil society member of the UK delegation to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs from 2008-2011, and is currently Deputy Director at Harm Reduction International, where he has worked since 2007. He lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Mr. Damon Barrett, (Director, International Centre on Human Rights and Drugs Policy)
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