Advocacy & Networking
The Partnership provides several advocacy activities at international level, with the aim to raise the profile of Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies at country and global levels and promote the significant role that RC/RC NSs can play in support of people suffering from drug addiction.
The primary message promoted by the Partnership through its advocacy efforts is the need for humane and effective drug policies that prioritize individual, public health approaches and evidence-based practices in prevention, harm reduction, treatment and rehabilitation.
The sense of humanitarian drug policy is to address the drug problems at all levels by giving emphasis to a humane attitude in support of people with drug disorders. The main objectives of humanitarian approaches are to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity.
We mainly focus our action for those who are struggling with their sickness every day, to those persons who live a miserable life because they are discriminated, tortured, deprived of any health and social support, deprived of their rights and dignity. We are mostly focused on the urgency to decrease the harm, right now, for people and communities affected by addictions.
The Partnership has been supporting NSs in strengthening links with key partners at country level dealing with harm reduction and other aspects of substance abuse, and in establishing new partnerships and alliances with main organizations, networks and international agencies involved in substance abuse related activities.
To this regard, the Partnership collaborates with relevant/major organizations and networks at European and international level, such as:
- Correlation-European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN)
- Drug Policy Network South East Europe (DPNSEE)
- Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association (MENAHRA)
- C4 RECOVERY FOUNDATION
- The Levenson Foundation
- PTACC - Police, Treatment, and Community Collaborative
- Knowmad Institute - European Institute for Multidisciplinary Studies on Human Rights and Science
Rome Consensus 2.0: Towards a Humanitarian Drug Policy
The Rome Consensus for Humanitarian Drug Policy is an initiative created in 2005 by a partnership between the Italian Red Cross (ItRC), the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) and the Villa Maraini Foundation (VMF). The aim was to promote a health-based approach to drug related suffering within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies and to prompt humanitarian action in this area.
The Rome Consensus 2.0 builds upon the first Consensus, broadening it out for new signatories from around the world, and providing a reference model for best practices on humanitarian drug policy for the coming decades. The new declaration seeks to establish a wider alliance among activists, professionals, beneficiaries and all the NGOs working in the field. New partnerships reinforce the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies mission, facilitate access at the community level, introduce new and more effective ways of working to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people and stimulate an international debate on how to tackle the drugs problems worldwide.