December 10 is Human Rights Day

This Sunday, December 10, is the UN Human Rights Day, with the week being marked by observances and events around the world. UN agencies have made significant progress in recognizing the impact of drug policies and human rights, and our own efforts for the 2016 "UN General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem" (UNGASS) brought together hundreds of NGOs arguing for human rights as the basis not only for drug policy reform, but even for questioning prohibition. One resource on the intersection of drugs and human rights is a set of fact sheets published by the Open Society Foundations, and many more can be found through a web search.

As many of our readers know, StoptheDrugWar.org has been engaged in advocacy seeking to stop the campaign of drug war killings taking place in the Philippines. The link includes actions you can take including writing the US Congress about our foreign aid. One of our partners, the Filipino American Human Rights Alliance, and others are organizing a number of events for Human Rights Day. Some of the locations include Los Angeles, SF and the Bay Area, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris and Bahrain -- email us if you want info on where to find them.

There is late-breaking word that the Philippines intends to announce its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court at the UN today. We'll post more on the site when we know it.

Earlier this week Foreign Policy magazine accorded its prestigious Global Thinker award to Senator Leila de Lima, who is in her 287th day of detention since challenging Philippine President Duterte on the killings. You can read her remarks online here. A video about Sen. de Lima's saga is online here. Lastly for the moment, a solidarity message for Human Rights Day from Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes.