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(2004/C 84 E/0568)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2431/03

by Marco Cappato (NI) to the Commission

(22 July 2003)

Subject:   HIV/AIDS situation in Central Asian countries

According to the United Nations, its specialised agencies and non-governmental organisations active in the field of harm reduction, HIV is spreading rapidly through the Central Asian countries. While the number of HIV cases remains small, it has grown exponentially in the past four to five years primarily through injecting drug use (IDU). In Uzbekistan there were almost as many new HIV cases reported in the first six months of 2002 as in the whole of the previous decade; injecting drug users (IDUs) accounted for 90 % of these cases. Neighbouring Kyrgyzstan reported four HIV cases in 1996; by the end of 2002 there were 825 cases, 82 % among IDUs. In Kazakhstan, IDUs comprise 87 % of the 2 870 reported HIV cases and in Tajikistan they comprised 73 % of the 45 registered cases. These statistics, however, do not indicate true HIV prevalence rates in the region, which are estimated to be up to ten times higher than those officially reported. Underreporting is caused by poor epidemiological surveillance.

Injecting drug use is rampant in the region partially because Central Asia is a crucial drug trafficking route through which drugs produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan filter into other markets. Studies show that, along trafficking routes across the world, when heroin is present a certain percentage of people will try it and become users. This growing HIV epidemic in the Central Asian countries can and must be contained.

Is the Commission involved in trying to reduce drug supply through seizures and the passage of punitive drug laws for possession of small quantities, driving in this way IDUs further underground where they are harder to reach and unable to access services, or is it pondering the possibility of providing access to drug treatment and needle exchange programmes therefore honouring its supposed balanced approach to the drug question?

Does the Commission not believe that the time has come to evaluate the ways in which drugs are currently ‘controlled’ by the prohibitionist arsenal of the three UN Conventions and the various national legislations deriving from them?

Answer given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(18 September 2003)

The European Union's strategy to fight drugs along the heroin routes was drawn up under its Action Plan on Drugs (2002-2004) which clearly sets out the measures to be taken over the five-year period by the EU institutions and the Member States.

These measures cover both demand and supply reduction and focus on the need for international cooperation and effective information, evaluation and coordination at all levels.

Under point 5 of the European Union's Action Plan in respect of external action, the Commission regards international cooperation as a key element in the fight against drugs. The Commission will give particular importance to the main trafficking routes supplying the European Union.

Since Afghanistan continues to be the main heroin producer in the world despite measures taken by the international community to eradicate drug production, the long-term objective is to set up a system of ‘filters’ between the main sources of opiates and heroin, Afghanistan, and Europe.

To attain this objective a number of technical assistance programmes and initiatives have been put in place either directly through specific measures to combat drugs or through complementary measures to strengthen border controls and customs control in the Newly-Independent States, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe.

The Commission has launched three coordinated anti-drug programmes in the three regions on the heroin routes: BUMAD (Belarus, Ukraine and Moldavia), SCAD (South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and CADAP (Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).

The overall objective of these three programmes is to reduce and prevent drug trafficking in the regions supplying the European Union.

The strategy adopted under these programmes is threefold:

To amplify the impact of these measures the Tacis anti-drug programmes will be closely coordinated with parallel customs and border control programmes, i.e. BOMCA (border management programme in Central Asia).

The action programme to combat drugs in Central Asia (CADAP) was launched in January 2001 with the appointment of a coordinator for the programme at the Commission Delegation in Almaty. He will soon be replaced and will join the BOMCA coordinator in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

In the first phase of the CADAP programme (CADAP I) some EUR 3,5 million was provided to fund the following projects:

The second phase of the CADAP programme (CADAP II) which will receive funding of EUR 4,5 million from Tacis will start in the autumn of this year.

This will be followed one year later by CADAP III with funding of EUR 3 million.

The following projects will be mounted under CAPAP II and CADAP III:

The Commission is also one of the main participants in, and contributors to, the United Nations Global Fund to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Funding will be used to support measures taken by the countries concerned including Central Asia.

At a more general level, the Commission has also focused its local development programmes in Central Asia in the southern regions of Tajikistan and in the Kyrgyz and Tajik areas of the Ferghana valley which are the main transit areas and where severe poverty makes the population even more vulnerable to traffickers and drug trafficking.

Finally, the Community is not party to the United Nations drugs conventions (with the exception of Article 12 of the 1988 Convention against the Illicit Trafficking in Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances in respect of chemical precursors) and it is therefore up to the Member States to propose any amendments to these Conventions.

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