Author: Igor Gordon

“Support. Don’t punish” campaign results

Posted on by Igor Gordon

On June 26, 2020 a number of events were held within the framework of the global campaign “Support. Don’t Punish” in the countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region with the support of the Eurasian Network of People Who Use Drugs (ENPUD), the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA), the International Consortium on Drug Policy (IDPC) and other networks and organizations, as well as with personal support of the activists and initiative groups. The COVID-19 pandemic made its adjustments to the campaign. However, the restrictive measures did not stop the activists, and they managed to hold the activities and events albeit in a changed format.

 

The campaign declares that health care and human rights must be installed in the core of drug policy. Activists took to the streets to publicly protest cruel and senseless government policies aimed at people who use drugs. Every year this campaign is held all over the world with the purpose of drawing attention to this unsolved problem over and over again!

 

June 26 is also the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Such a discriminatory and repressive name for this day was invented at the UN. Of course this is not surprising, taking into account the roles played by the United Nations in the never-ending “war on drugs” around the world, and in cowardly disregard or support by various structures and agencies of this organization of the methods of repressive drug policies of many countries around the world.

You can learn more about repressive drug policies and campaigns in Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Germany in the report. 

The report was prepared by Alexander Levin, Eurasian Network of People who Use Drugs. link

Purple International Children's Book Day_School Poster, копія, копія
Click on picture to open report

How to exhibit about harm reduction at music festival

Posted on by Igor Gordon

Harm reduction at music festivals – it is not a new practice for Europe. However, here, in CEECA region, we are just making first steps towards implementation of such practices in condition of criminalization of drug possession and distribution. This year at one of the small festivals in Lithuania, our team joined the initiative and now we are ready to share a few impressions. “Say know” instead of “say no” to drugs was our motto during the YAGA festival, which took place on August 6-10 in Lithuania.

The participants of the festival, regardless of whether they use psychoactive substances or not, were very interested in any information on how to protect themselves and others in different situations related to the consumption and different sexual practices.  What do we need to know to reduce the risk or harm from substance use?

– You need to know what you use. With legal substances, the quality of the product has been tested and licensed by the government. In the case of illegal substances, you can not trust what drug dealers say. Drug testing is a key approach to harm reduction. It would be ideal to analyze the content of different substances in a drug, but so far only a couple of countries in Europe have offered such testing . In the context of the festival, it is possible to carry out reagent tests, when a person can test by himself or herself whether the substance declared by the seller is in a tablet or powder, some tests also make it possible to determine the purity of the substance. After taking several tests, a person will be able to find out if there are any other substances in the tablets.

– You need to know the health risks and consequences of using psychoactive substances in different ways and know remember reduction measures to prevent the risks. EHRA team at the exhibition of harm reduction tools showed visitors what items can help to reduce the health risks of smoking, oral, injected, or rectal use.

– You need to know how to prevent overdose or how to make human life safer in the event of an overdose. And while the use of naloxone is recommended for opioid drugs, there are no such simple overdose prevention methods for stimulants.  

What is important is that the team has agreed in advance with the festival organizers, local authorities, the police, and medical services on all harm reduction activities. Any talk about drugs, peer counseling, or a seminar on drugs initially frightens the organizers, as if the conversation itself was propaganda for use. In Lithuania, the Be safe lab project has been running for several years now at the most popular music festivals, in cooperation with the Drug, Tobacco, and alcohol control department and the Coalition “I can live”. Thanks to this project, festival participants have access to information about the harm caused by different substances, especially if they are mixed, and have an opportunity to receive professional medical (psychological and drug treatment) assistance in case of problems. Such partnership facilitated our activity at the festival.

Information about the safe combination of drugs, harm reduction measures for different ways of use, reducing the risk of overdose, and assistance with the unpleasant consequences of drug use (what is called a bad trip, when psychosis, paranoid conditions, etc.) – these topics mostly were in demand among festival participants. It was important that professional help and support in case of problems related to the use of this drug was available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week right at the festival. Our partners from Demetra during the festival provided the opportunity for those wishing to be tested for HIV, as well as free consultations on safe sex and receive condoms and lubricants.

One of popular spots in the festival camp was EHRA’s equipment exhibition “HARM REDUCTION TOOLS”. The wooden stand demonstrated different examples of the tools used to reduce harm was placed with short explanation – for what drug is it used and what health harm it could prevent. Different drug use equipment like smoking kits, snorting kits, booty bumping, tools for oral administration of drugs, injecting equipment, reagents for the drug checking were presented. 

In total, around 15-20 different tools from traditional needles and syringes, condoms and lubricants to overdose preventing medication such as nasal naloxone, other tools of safety such as tests for drug checking and gelatine capsules. During several hours per day one of the EHRA volunteers guided festival participants on what was presented on the stand as well as provided with additional explanation on harm reduction approaches and tools used all around the globe and in Lithuania.

The idea with harm reduction exhibition worked out well, a lot of people came to the stand, listened to the "lecturer", asked questions and took reagent tests and gelatine capsules. People said that they feel "enlightened" and that this project is very useful and important. Our colleagues from Demetra and Be Safe Lab also learned a lot and proposed to repeat this exhibition at future events.
Maria Plotko
Senior Program Officer, exhibition co-creator

Also this year EHRA team organized a seminar “Sex, Drugs and Harm Reduction” to tell festival visitors more about harm reduction, safe use of psychoactive substances and about protection in “chemsex”.

The last but, not least initiative was the distribution of reagent tests for those who wanted to check psychoactive substances. This action was important in term of local approach to the harm reduction as in Lithuania on-site drug checking is not allowed (criminalized).

Despite the late hour quite big group of people came to the workshop on Sex, Drugs and Harm reduction there was a problem with loud music and no lightning but people stayed anyway, surprisingly asked a lot of questions about naloxone
Maria Plotko
Senior Program Officer, exhibition co-creator

Harm reduction during music festivals and events, introduction of harm reduction tools for non-injection use into harm reduction programs, integration of substance testing in CEECA countries – all these tasks are faced by EHRA in advocacy. Based on the practical experience of consulting during the festival, the team will act more effectively in future activities.

It was a pleasure for the EHRA team and for me personally to hear from young people from around the world, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland that our exhibition of harm reduction tools was useful. Many people, while looking at simple tools, immediately discussed how and where to buy gelatin capsules or substance tests. Health and safety are very important to everyone we talked to, and harm reduction programs are an opportunity to know and understand more about your safety and well-being. It is a pity that harm reduction organizations in the Eurasia region rarely have the full range of resources to help people who use drugs. Sometimes there is nothing else but a simple syringe, condom, and HIV information material. But the topic of quality and range of harm reduction services in our region is definitely much broader than our visit to one music festival with an exhibition and seminar.
Ganna Dovbakh
EHRA Executive Director

EHRA is looking for a video production crew based in Vilnius to participate in webinar workshop materials production

Posted on by Igor Gordon

BACKGROUND

Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) is a non-for-profit public membership-based organization since 2017, operating in 29 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA). EHRA mission is to actively unite and support communities and civil societies to ensure the rights and freedoms, health, and well-being of people who use psychoactive substances in the CEECA region. EHRA’s Secretariat is based in Vilnius, Lithuania.

EHRA is going to conduct a series of webinars on human rights and documenting human rights violations for activists, civil society and community organizations from 5 South East Europe countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, The Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia. 3 webinars will be conducted online on September 16, 23 and 30, 2020. Prior to each webinar participants will be provided with 2-3 educational videos, where 2 experts will discuss certain topics in a dialogue/interview format. Language of videos and webinars is English.

Purpose and objectives

Filming of 6 and production of 7 videos for webinars of 30-40 minutes for educational purposes. The process includes:

  • Filming with own crew‘s equipment of 6 two-experts dialogue (one expert is based in Vilnius, other in Toronto (Canada). Vilnius-based expert part should be filmed by the crew in Vilnius, Toronto expert will film his part himself. 7th video will be filmed by experts in Tallinn, Estonia, themselves and provide the crew with filmed material. Video dialogues will last up to 2 hours each.
  • Video editing of each of 7 video dialogues up to 30-40 minutes videos according to content, stylistic and visual guidelines provided by EHRA staff, including infographics and minor visual effects.
  • Ensuring audio files of edited final video versions are available to EHRA.
  • Video teaser/intro production for a series of webinars announcement.

 

Deliverables and outputs

  • Shooting of 6 webinars between August 26 – September 22, 2020.
  • Production and editing of 7 video materials September 1-25, 2020.
  • Teaser/intro production by September 1, 2020

Timeline

  1. Online interview with details of cooperation, requirements for the final product – August 24, 2020.
  2. Face-to-face meeting to agree on the scene of shooting – August 25, 2020.
  3. Shooting period (August 26 – September 22, 2020).
  4. Postproduction period (September 1-25, 2020).

Evaluation criteria

A two-stage procedure will be utilized in evaluating the proposals:

  • evaluation of the previous experience (portfolio) via technical criteria – 80% in total evaluation
  • comparison of the costs (best value for money) – 20% in total evaluation.

Cost evaluation is only undertaken for technical submissions that score a minimum 70 points out of a maximum of 100 as a requirement to pass the technical evaluation. A proposal which fails to achieve the minimum technical threshold will not be considered further.

To assess submitted applications, the following technical criteria will be used (80%):

Criteria Weighting
Experience of indoor shooting reflected in portfolio; 30 points
Experience in filming process organization; 30 points
Experience in video editing, previous work with captions and graphic elements reflected in portfolio; 30 points
A sense of taste and style; 10 points
Total 100 points

 

Cost proposal (20%):

EHRA will allocate same importance to the provided portfolio and recorded experience as to the cost of the services. The cost proposal will be evaluated in terms of best value-for money to EHRA in EUR, price and other factors considered.

Conditions

This announcement and its attachments shall not be construed as a contract or a commitment of any kind. This request for proposals in no way obligates EHRA to award a contract, nor does it commit EHRA to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of the proposals.

Terms of payment and other conditions same as a final timeline will be indicated in the agreement which EHRA will sign with the winner.

How to apply

To respond to this TOR, please send letter of interest with prices in EUR (shooting and video editing per video gross) and submit your portfolio by e-mail referenced under title “Video crew” to alina@harmreductioneurasia.org by 24:00 EET, August 23, 2020.

 

Urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteurs: the Russian Federation

Posted on by Igor Gordon

17 June 2020, Russian Civil Society Mechanism for Monitoring of Drug Policy Reforms, together with the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice (Russia) and the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association appealed to the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Continue reading “Urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteurs: the Russian Federation” →

Terms of Reference for a consultant to develop a set of practices of delivering harm reduction and other services for people who use drugs in emergency situations

Posted on by Igor Gordon

COVID-19 crisis clearly showed that flexibility of harm reduction services during crisis can prevent social isolation instead of social distancing of people who use drugs, even in places where harsh drug policy environment exists.

Continue reading “Terms of Reference for a consultant to develop a set of practices of delivering harm reduction and other services for people who use drugs in emergency situations” →

“Support. Don’t Punish” WHAT HAS CHANGED ON THE HORIZONS OF DRUG POLICY?

Posted on by Igor Gordon

Author: Eliza Kurcevič

In 2017, Lithuanian legislators decided that the laws related to the possession of psychoactive substances needed to be tightened. And by taking such a step, they turned the “war against drugs” into a “war against the people”. Why did it become a war against the people?

Continue reading ““Support. Don’t Punish” WHAT HAS CHANGED ON THE HORIZONS OF DRUG POLICY?” →

Request for quotes/offers: Editing and proofreading of various types of documents in English/Russian languages

Posted on by Igor Gordon

The purpose of this request for proposals is to select a consultant (s) who will provide services for editing and proofreading of various types of documents, reports and publications in English and in Russian language.

Continue reading “Request for quotes/offers: Editing and proofreading of various types of documents in English/Russian languages” →

Small grants to promote community-led research

Posted on by Igor Gordon

As part of the Eurasian Regional Consortium’s project “Thinking outside the box: overcoming challenges in community advocacy for sustainable and high-quality HIV services” supported by the Robert Carr Fund for civil society networks (RCF) within Community-led monitoring of quality of services cycle EHRA announces a call for applications for national organizations who conducted community-led research on the quality of services for people who use drugs.

Continue reading “Small grants to promote community-led research” →