Letter to CND Chairperson Ms. Selma Ashipala-Musavyi from Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, and Anand Grover, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

The failure to ensure access to controlled medicines for the relief of pain and suffering threatens fundamental rights to health and to protection against cruel inhuman and degrading treatment. International human rights law requires that governments must provide essential medicines – which include, among others, opioid analgesics – as part of their minimum core obligations under the right to health. Governments also have an obligation to take measures to protect people under their jurisdiction from inhuman and degrading treatment. Failure of governments to take reasonable measures to ensure accessibility of pain treatment, which leaves millions of people to suffer needlessly from severe and often prolonged pain, raises questions whether they have adequately discharged this obligation.

Lack of access to essential medicines, including for pain relief, is a global human rights issue and must be addressed forcefully in the next ten-year drug strategy.