The Intersection of Youth Day and Human Rights

Commemorating Youth Day: Addressing human rights and Harm reduction for South African youth amidst drug abuse and discriminatory practices.

On 16th June of each year, South Africa marks Youth Day to pay tribute and commemorate a protest by brave youth that resulted in a wave of protests across the country known as the Soweto uprising of 1976. Some of them died as they protested for human rights during the apartheid regime.

Youth who use drugs in South Africa are routinely subjected to the traumas of arbitrary detention, extortion, police violence, torture, and ill-treatment in the name of drug control. These measures violate international juvenile justice standards, which stipulate that the primary goal of juvenile justice should be to divert young people from the criminal justice system.

Youth have borne the brunt of abuse, and despite their unique risks and needs, young people who use drugs are highly underserved by harm reduction programs and care services in general.

Punitive drug laws also continue to provide the architecture within which discriminatory policing practices operate. Harm reduction is essential to the progressive realization of the right to the highest attainable standard of health for young people who use drugs.

Youth Day should serve as a reminder to focus on effectively fulfilling the Constitutional mandate of promoting, protecting, and monitoring the realization of youth rights in South Africa. Stakeholders are obligated to take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social, and educational measures, to protect the youth from drug-related harm.

Harm reduction measures can potentially benefit youth in South Africa who smoke or use drugs, and who experience the greatest health disparities.