Righting a historical wrong: The UN review of the international status of the coca leaf

In July 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) received a formal notification by the Plurinational State of Bolivia requesting the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) to conduct a critical review of the coca leaf, and to provide recommendations on its status within the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

This critical review comes nearly 75 years after the United Nations (UN) called for the abolition of traditional uses of the plant. This is despite the fact that coca has been used for millennia by Indigenous Peoples in the Andean-Amazonian region for traditional, religious, ancestral and medicinal purposes. At an event held at the occasion of the 67th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), Bolivia’s Vice-President, David Choquehuanca, described the critical review as ‘an important step in righting the historical wrong of the 1961 Convention that destined the coca leaf for extermination and a move towards reconciling the drug control treaty system with the rights of Indigenous Peoples’. (idpc – international drug policy consortium, UK, 26.09.2024)

https://idpc.net/publications/2024/9/righting-a-historical-wrong-the-un-review-of-the-international-status-of-the-coca-leaf