Danmark er et af de 17 lande, der i FN har afvist Bolivias krav om at ophæve forbudet mod at tygge coca, skriver International Institute Drugs and Democracy mandag. Cocatygning er en del af den indianske kultur.
NEW YORK, 7 February 2011: The final count after closure of the January 31 deadline to file objections to the Bolivian amendment to remove the ban on coca leaf chewing in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, comes to 17 objections: the US, UK, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Russian Federation, Japan, Singapore, Slovakia, Estonia, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Latvia, Malaysia and Mexico.
That means that only 17 of the 184 countries that are Party to the treaty (as amended by the 1972 Protocol) have filed an objection.
The 17 objectors will effectively block the automatic adoption of the Bolivian amendment. What happens next is still unclear. The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) will have to reach a decision on how to proceed, and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) probably will be consulted about it during its annual session on March 21-25 in Vienna.
A next step could be to convene a Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss the issue. Germany has said that it will favourably consider such an option. Convening such a conference is precisely what the United States wanted to avoid by drumming up as many objections as possible. However, 17 of 184 are not even 10 per cent.
President Morales has said that Bolivia is contemplating to withdraw from the Single Convention and adhere again with a reservation on the abolishing of coca chewing, in case their proposed amendment will be rejected.
South American countries signed several declarations by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) that “acknowledged that the chewing of coca leaves is an ancestral cultural expression of the people of Bolivia that should be respected by the international community”.
Most countries argue their decision to reject the Bolivian amendment on the basis of “the importance to maintain the integrity of the 1961 Convention, which constitutes an important tool for the global fight against drug trafficking”.
