#EVAWUD2025

The social-structural contexts of cannabis consumption and harm reduction among young Nigerian women Nelson & Nnam analyse how Nigeria's socio-legal environment surrounding drug use impacts young women's cannabis use patterns, calling for structural-level interventions to foster safer use.

🚨 Young Nigerian women who use cannabis to cope with trauma, poverty and violence are pushed into vulnerability by criminalisation.

Women have developed harm reduction practices, but safety is eroded by prohibition.
#EVAWUD2025

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Tackling intersectional stigma in healthcare access for marginalized communities in CEECA SWAN examines the social justice impact of intersecting identities and provides recommendations for improving services, rights-based programs, and advocacy.

Across EECA, people with intersecting identities — women, sex workers, LGBT, people living with HIV / who use drugs — face stigma, violence and the denial of care.

Rights-based, gender-responsive, community-led services lower these barriers.
#EVAWUD2025

On the situation of women and gender-diverse people who use drugs surviving multiple situations of violence and vulnerability in Spain - Shadow report Metzineres and IDPC illustrate through official documents, research and personal testimonies the need to eliminate discrimination, criminalisation and systematic violence against women and gender-diverse people who use drugs.

⚠️ In Spain, women who use drugs face homelessness, violence and routine police harassment — often excluded from support services. 

✊ A feminist, harm-reduction approach is essential to end discrimination and criminalisation. 

#EVAWUD2025

Gender, coca, and the Colombian Peace Agreement: The overlooked gendered dynamics in policy implementation Zuluaga Duque et al. reveal how coca substitution policies continue to undermine women’s autonomy by overlooking their conditions of exploitation and exclusion despite their centrality in cultivation.

🌱 Women coca growers in Colombia are essential to the coca economy — yet regularly sidelined by government programmes.

Drug policies must recognise their labour, safety, and economic autonomy.

Learn more: https://f.mtr.cool/zmmlwfpcng #EVAWUD2025

Drug use, harm reduction and the right to health - Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health The UNSR on the right to health explores the importance of harm reduction in relation to both drug use and related norms and policies.

🚫 Punitive drug laws block access to health, especially for women.

👐 A rights–based approach means decriminalisation, harm reduction, and services shaped by those most affected.

Invest in care, not punishment. Communities, not cages.
#EVAWUD2025

Gender affirming harm reduction: A toolkit for syringe service programs This toolkit assists service providers in understanding the needs of trans, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people in syringe service programmes.

Trans and gender-diverse people who use drugs face police abuse, discrimination and barriers to care.

Gender-affirming harm reduction centres autonomy, safety and dignity, grounded in lived experience.

#EVAWUD2025

Mainstreaming harm reduction in drug policy in Indonesia LBHM and SPINN call for ending Indonesia’s war on drugs and urge the adoption of gender-sensitive, human rights-based drug policies.

⚖️ Indonesia’s punitive drug laws expose women and gender-diverse people to violence, detention and denial of health services.

🌱 Harm reduction must be gender-responsive, community-led and rooted in rights.

Less criminalisation, more care! #EVAWUD2025

MOHRE - Monthly Establishment Statement

Women and gender-diverse people face higher overdose risks in toxic drug markets — including at supervised injection sites.

Solutions exist: gender-responsive harm reduction, safe supply, and decriminalisation that puts care first. #EVAWUD2025

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Pregnancy and substance use - A harm reduction toolkit The Harm Reduction Coalition and the Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction offer a toolkit to support the health and well-being of pregnant people who use drugs and their families.

💔 People who use drugs face punitive systems, stigma, and denial of care during pregnancy — pushing many into danger.

🫂 Trauma-informed, non-judgmental harm reduction keeps families safe and centres dignity.

Care is not coerced. #EVAWUD2025

Resisting patriarchy and the 'drug war': The rise of Bolivia’s Community of Women Who Use Drugs and the Libertas Programme Against criminalisation, invisibility and systemic violence, these initiatives seek to expand gender-responsive harm reduction and policy reform, based on lived experience.

🚨 Women who use drugs in Bolivia face criminalisation, sexual violence and exclusion under Law 1008.

🌱Community-led organising, decriminalisation and gender-responsive harm reduction offer real safety, dignity and rights. #EVAWUD2025

Scapegoated communities, shared struggles: A call for solidarity with people who use drugs and queer and trans people London-Nadeau et al. urge solidarity against authoritarian attacks on bodily autonomy, highlighting shared histories of resistance and how they gesture to collective liberation.

🛑Attacks against people who use drugs and gender diverse people are on the rise, undermining bodily autonomy and safety.

These struggles are linked — rooted in repression, stigma and efforts to control.

Solidarity is survival. #EVAWUD2025

Development dimensions of drug policy: Assessing new challenges, uncovering opportunities, and addressing emerging issues UNDP charts a rights- and development-centred turn in drug policy, prioritising decriminalisation, harm reduction, equity-led transitions, and practical pathways to responsibly regulate some drug markets.

⚠️ UNDP shows punitive drug policies worsen poverty, exclusion and gendered harms — deeply affecting women who use drugs.

🌱 Development must centre rights, gender equality and harm reduction, not punishment.

#EVAWUD2025

Ethical communication on gender-based violence and substance use This webinar by Dianova spotlighted how ethical, stigma-free communication can reshape public understanding of gender-based violence and substance use.

📰 Media narratives often link drug use to GBV, masking the real drivers: patriarchy, stigma, and inequality.

🎯 Ethical communication centres survivors' needs, rejects sensationalism, and exposes systemic roots of violence.

#EVAWUD2025

International Drug Policy Consortium The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a global network of over 192 NGOs that promote objective and open debate on drug policy at national, regional and international level.

🚨 Women are the fastest-growing prison population, jailed under punitive drug laws that punish poverty and survival.

🌱 Ending this violence calls for decriminalisation and gender-responsive harm reduction.

Learn more: https://f.mtr.cool/nzihlcnudl
#EVAWUD2025

On Intn'l Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we highlight the pervasive, often hidden violence faced by women & gender-diverse people who use drugs.

Criminalisation, stigma, and punitive systems fuel harm + must be tackled as part of ending GBV. #EVAWUD2025 @whrinetwork.bsky.social