Impressions from the Encod delegation at the UN CND in Vienna

Part 3

Enrico Fletzer

15 march 2012

I was very afraid of the results of the endeavor of organizing side events and the demonstration but it was not at all a bad experience. We will probably make a workshop in Italy on how not to organize a mass event but as a matter of fact nobody died and the italian delegation seems to be starting to work on reasonable things….

We had people from different realities and the planned events of Cannapisa and Million Marijuana March on one side and the Rototom Process could force prohibition on the bank of the accused ones in the course of may finishing with the trial on Filippo Giunta because of the intriguing relationship reggae as crime ( induction to drug use)

The films that we showed in the University Street on Friday 9th could be easily combined with other films for a film exhibition to be shown in Human Rights Film Festivals…

No much to say about the small march to the VIC on saturday which was a good testimonial of the resistance will of the italian delegation, on sunday we had the first approach with the groups and individuals engaged in the IDPC. In the evening the italian delegation paid a visit to the italian embassy and protocoled the reasons of the protest against the most stupid laws on drugs of our continent.

Monday was definitely the Evo Morales day starting with the cortege of bolivian musicians and accompanied by Yuri Fedotov up to the 14th floor that became immediately inaccessible to most people. Again in the plenary he pleaded for the holy coca leaf and also for the commitment of his government on the war on drug traffic. Showing as usual coca products. He was later lecturing at the Academy of Diplomacy with two austrian professors speaking a very fluent spanish. And then the final kick.

In the conference itself the NGO are quite active promoting good meetings with the reform movement but the general set is not moving much. Whereas the US delegation seems to be very cautious not to disturb either the anti drug lobby nor the reform or anti prohibitionist groups.

On Thursday a very bright bunch of youngster presented a very important video footage on how drug laws affect young people even not users groups like in Poland and other countries. Fredrik made an important statement on the fact that protection of youth is used as an speculative argument to confirm the war on drugs. The same can be told about young children. Too.

Another important point made by Freek was that although since many years he’s been told that the CND would publish an official document on cannabis, the one we found is full of disclaimers about it not being official anyhow and that was confirmed by others saying that no discussion paper document draft is fit for discussion. Everything sounds Kafkaesque to me like the fact that most NGOs pretend not to face policy making at all. It is a little weird for me but as Carel Edwards told us it is quite important that the Czech delegation added a reference to the statements of the Global Commission

Today we split. I am supposed to go to the lunch with Pien Metaal of the TNI on the different proposal arising from South America and there is also an encounter NGO and INDPC at the same time.

To night seems very interesting what the Karl Renner Institute is preparing with a very famous austrian-german sociologist and writer at the Sueddeutschen Zeitung…

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