The Global Drug and Development Policy Roundup is an invitation-only event which will address the nexus between illicit drugs and socioeconomic development. It will identify actionable ways to increase the engagement of the international development community in tackling illicit drug production, trade and use.

The Global Roundup will use the report "Dependent on Development. The interrelationships between illicit drugs and socioeconomic development" (pdf), released by the Nossal Institute for Global Health in December 2010, as a basis for discussion./p>

A select group of drug and development policy-makers and experts will be invited and charged with developing recommendations on how the report's central hypothesis can be operationalised: "Equitable socioeconomic development is necessary for control of illicit drugs, while effective and human rights based illicit drug control is required to foster sustainable socioeconomic development."

Dr Markus Schultze-Kraft, who is a drug, conflict/security and development expert at IDS, will host the event and co-chair and facilitate it together with Dr Desmond Cohen and Ms Kasia Malinowska of the Global Drug Policy Program, OSF.

The thirty invited attendees include representatives of bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental international development agencies (GIZ, European Commission, AUSAID, USAID, Dutch Development Cooperation, WB, UNDP, Oxfam, Christian Aid, ODI, among others); multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental drug policy organisations (UNODC, Tanzania Drug Control Commission, TNI, IDPC, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, among others); and< other key stakeholders and experts (Brown University, Los Andes University, Swansea University, among others).

The Global Roundup will produce a roadmap for deeper integration of, and more effective cooperation between, the global drug and development policy communities.

Enquiries to globalroundup@ids.ac.uk

Further resources

Co-convenor Markus Schultze-Kraft has written a series of blogs about Global Drug Policy:

• Why the International Narcotics Control Board has got it wrong
• A budding renaissance of the international drug policy debate
• Some good news from the Cartagena Summit of the Americas

And a podcast interview with Markus Schultze-Kraft for the Council on Foreign Relations.

A blog by Nick Crofts, Drugs and development - caught in a vicious cycle, published by The Guardian, on the publication of the Dependent on Development report.

A blog by Jonathan Glennie, Time for NGOs to talk about drugs, published on The Guardian's Poverty Matter blog.

'Illicit Drugs and Development'. Papers from a 2005 meeting on drugs and development in the Asia-Pacific regions organised by Nick Crofts and Pam Thomas (ANU), published in the Development Bulletin (see link under Related content).

Development First: A More Humane and Promising Approach to Reducing Cultivation of Crops for Illicit Markets A report from the Washington Office on Latin America.

The War on Drugs: Undermining international development and security, increasing conflict, by Count the Costs.

Also recommended

• Merill Singer (2008) Drugs and Development: Global Impact on Sustainable Growth and Human Rights. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. 
• Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza (eds) (2010) Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs. World Bank; Palgrave Macmillan UK
• David Mansfield 'Treating the Opium Problem in World Bank Operations in
  Afghanistan'. Guidelines prepared for the World Bank. (see link under Related content)
• OECD's report Transnational organized crime and fragile states, which includes a brief discussion on going beyond the 'war on drugs'.