The sense of the humanitarian policy framework of this declaration comes from the need to give emphasis to a more humane attitude in support of people with drug disorders, to focus our action on those who are struggling with their sickness everyday. In fact, we address our call to action 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 because of their drug disorder. The primary objective of humanitarian aid and approach is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. Our main goal is mostly focused on the urgency to decrease the harm right now, for people affected by addictions.
To do so, we need to reduce the side effects caused by social, legal and cultural criminalization and stigmatization of people that use drugs or are living with infectious diseases. We should focus our action to facilitate their access to treatment. In the same time our advocacy role is to give to those groups a voice, represent their needs, empower them so they can fight with us for their universal right to be treated as humans and treated as patients.
With this aim is crucial to find strategies in order to “bridging the gap” between Civil Society and Institutions, between beneficiaries and communities, between hard to reach groups and hard to reach services. Between them and us. This is the sense of this humanitarian initiative we would like to stress by addressing this declaration both to the CSOs universe and to the governmental environment.
This declaration cannot be the encyclopedia of all theories to tackle drug problems. Our compass is orientated on drug addicts who need help, not on the general population. Our tool is the humanitarian approach. Our faith is the light of science. Our goal is to save lives and reduce harmful consequences of people with drug disorders.
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