money & guns

SSDP reports on “Beyond 2008–Civil Society’s Contribution to Global Drug Policy“, a forum for non-governmental organizations to contribute to a review of UN drug policy over the past decade.  Video footage is provided by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union but interestingly, footage of the actual discussions were banned part way through the forum.  The US government, of course sent along a representative despite obviously not being an NGO….

I had to find out about the American woman with the yellow badge. At a social gathering later that evening, I described my observations to some of the NGO delegates who regularly attend these U.N. events. Turns out that the yellow-badge woman is June Sivilli, an employee of the U.S. drug czar’s office and a regular fixture at Vienna drug meetings. Until now, she has been able to speak as an official voice of the U.S. government — and the U.S. is always the most important voice on U.N. drug policy issues. Now that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are bringing the voices of ordinary people to the table for the first time ever, she was actively subverting the process, throwing every possible obstacle in the way of this quite benign process.