indigenous rights

On Thursday, the 30th July 2009 at the Substantive Session of the Economic and Social Council Bolivia began the formal process to amend legislation concerning coca leaf chewing.

The United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that dates back to 1961 puts the coca leaf in the same category as Cocaine and states that ‘coca leaf chewing must be abolished within twenty-five years from the coming into force of this Convention’. The Convention was later signed by Bolivia in 1976 during the dictatorship of Colonel Hugo Banzer.