Brasília, 22 June 2022 - The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Brazil participated last Wednesday (22) in the 24th National Week on Drug Policy. The themes that marked the exhibitions were international cooperation and the importance of developing and implementing integrated actions.
At the opening of the meeting, the National Secretary of Drug Policy, Paulo Gustavo Maiurino, highlighted the importance of the integration of actions and policies. "This year, Brazil will have its first National Plan on Drug Policy, the PLANAD. This unprecedented initiative of the federal government integrates a series of best practices and an action plan to combat drug trafficking, in a clear redirection of drug policy in the country. This will occur with the inclusion of the population, experts from various agencies and the federal government, joining forces and a serious debate to face the problem," said the secretary, who represented the Minister of Justice and Public Safety at the event.
The National Secretary for Drug Care and Prevention, Quirino Cordeiro Jr., mentioned joint actions involving several bodies and national and international partners, highlighting the signing, earlier this year, of a partnership with UNODC around the creation of the National System for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drugs (SINAP), as another action to strengthen and consolidate the new policy on drugs.
UNODC Brazil’s Centre of Excellence for Drug Supply Reduction (CoE) participated in the panel "Drug Policies in Brazil and International Articulation" and emphasized the main role of the use of data and concrete evidence as a subsidy for the construction of public policies.
UNODC highlighted the CoE work, which is the result of a partnership among UNODC, the National Secretariat for Drug Policy and Asset Management of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (SENAD/MJSP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). "The goal of this partnership is to bring together the Brazilian government's work the scientific framework that UNODC, which is based in Vienna, brings around the world, in several countries, in the production of evidence on drugs. It is a successful partnership that began in late 2020 with the main objective of providing SENAD with the tools to prepare studies and analyses on trends and threats posed by different illicit trafficking and transnational organized crime," UNODC’s CoE coordinator said.
Besides presenting the main CoE studies, UNODC announced the availability of the first module of the "Introductory Course on Drug Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime", an initiative created in partnership with the UNODC's Global eLearning platform.
Online course
Entitled "Introduction to the topic of drug trafficking and transnational organized crime", this module addresses several issues, including the main international agreements to which Brazil is a signatory; Brazilian drug policy legislation; illicit financial flows and Brazil's challenges in the transnational drug market; data on drug supply in Brazil and regionally; New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and how the Early Warning Systems operate; how Brazilian authorities respond to cross-border crimes related to drug trafficking; and how assets seized from drug trafficking are managed and used to finance public policy on drugs in Brazil.
The first module of the course is available for access on the UNODC Global e-Learning. The course will have two more modules and UNODC will issue certificates to people who complete it.
