ID: HR19-5
Presenting author: Damon Barrett
Damon Barrett
Canada’s much-discussed cannabis law reform places it in breach of two of the international drug control treaties. There are flexibilities in these treaties with regard to criminal sanctions and other issues, but Canada is clearly moving beyond them in regulating the cannabis market for recreational purposes. However, the drugs conventions are not the only treaties in question. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is directly engaged via article 33 on the protection of children from drugs, and which cites the drugs conventions directly. The two regimes have been seen as interrelated since the drafting of the CRC, raising questions about Canada’s child rights compliance due to its cannabis reforms. Canada’s joint fifth and sixth reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will be reviewed following legalisation (not before late 2019). A question is how the Committee will respond. This, it is argued, has important implications for the relationship between the CRC and the drugs conventions and the meaning of the child’s right to protection from drugs in international law.
This presentation sets out the practice of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to date as it relates to the relationship between the CRC and the drugs conventions. Four ways in which the Committee might address Canada’s cannabis reforms and their implications for the meaning of article 33 are set out. An interpretive option for article 33 to decouple the CRC from the normative requirements of the drugs conventions is presented, rooted in teleological method and the pacta tertiis rule. Rather than acting as a human rights rubber stamp on the drugs conventions, this approach allows the normative space for the CRC to operate as child rights-based framework against which drug policies should be scrutinised, including in post-prohibition scenarios.