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Global drug policy has undergone significant change over the past decade, especially with the advent of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs. This was a catalyst moment both in highlighting the need for a gender perspective in drug policy, and in initiating a review of the indicators used to evaluate progress in drug policy.

To date, the UN has not adequately tracked gender-specific data in drug policy. This is symptomatic of the lack of focus granted to the specific vulnerabilities and needs of women in the illicit drug trade. This has resulted in a knowledge and understanding gap in relation to the issues faced by women worldwide.

The importance of quantitative and qualitative data and analysis of how and why women are involved in the illicit drug trade, and how this relates to their age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, family situation and history of trauma, violence and mental illness cannot be understated. Without adequate indicators on the underlying factors of their engagement in the trade, the differentiated impacts that both drugs and drug policies have on their lives, and the vulnerabilities they may face, policy makers will be unable to design and implement drug policies that are truly effective.

This chapter provides a historic overview of how data on women has so far been tracked by the UN. The chapter will then look to the future, focussing on opportunities to identify more meaningful indicators within a revised Annual Reports Questionnaire, and also by leveraging the Sustainable Development Goals, UN human rights mechanisms and civil society research.

This chapter analyses major issues surrounding the Annual Report Questionnaire (ARQ) – the key mechanism through which the UN collects data on various facets of the world’s illicit drug market. As the ARQ is currently under review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the authors suggest ways to incorporate the gains made at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem.

The UNGASS Outcome Document has, to certain degree, enabled the international community to move away from the simplistic goals of a drug-free world enshrined in the 2009 Political Declaration and towards a more comprehensive health- and human rights-based approach. The UNGASS has also laid important groundwork for the 2019 Ministerial Segment, where member states will delineate the global drug control approach for the next decade. In this context, the issue of metrics and indicators has a critical political role to play as it will shape how member states will measure progress against their international drug control commitments.

Starting with a review of the ‘triple trouble’ – poor data quality, low response rates from Member States and other inconsistencies that have long persisted with the ARQ – the chapter moves on to offer substantive critiques on the content of the Questionnaire and ways to better incorporate issues related to health, human rights and development. The chapter concludes by providing guidance on possible synergies with the Outcome Document and the Sustainable Development Goals, bringing international drug control in line with the UN Charter.

This chapter presents a broad introduction to women’s varied interactions with drugs and drug markets. It provides a brief overview of the international framework of drug control and the ways in which drug policy enforcement differently impacts women and men. It highlights the negative and disproportionate impacts on women of criminalisation-based approaches and how drug policy serves to reinforce existing problems of structural discrimination. This provides context for the contributions to this edited collection, which are summarised in the introduction. The book situates drug policy reform as a crucial and underlooked feminist issue.