Drugs, Peace, and Development: Rethinking Policy

Explore new ways to tackle drugs, development, and peacebuilding challenges

There is growing awareness that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed and that there is a need for reformed drug policies. But what does this mean in practice?

On this five-week course from SOAS University of London, you’ll delve into the latest debates in global drug policy and the current efforts to integrate drugs, development, and peacebuilding policies.

You’ll learn about the tensions and trade-offs between different policy goals and how these can be navigated to work towards more humane drug policies.

This course draws on world-leading research conducted in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Myanmar – countries that account for more than 90% of the world’s illicit opium production and more than half of the world’s cocaine production. In-depth case studies will take you into the lives of those involved in illicit drug economies.

Discover the complex relationships between illegal drugs, development, and peacebuilding in borderlands

You’ll learn how drugs, development, and peacebuilding intersect with one another in complex and surprising ways, and the consequences for people who depend upon illicit economies at the margins.

Explore the opportunities and challenges for more development-oriented drug policies

You’ll examine creative approaches and new policy directions for responding to illicit drugs. Within this, you’ll identify interventions that can generate more humane and inclusive outcomes for those involved in illicit drug economies.

Learn from experts at SOAS University of London and a global network of researchers

SOAS is a centre of excellence in research and policy approaches to drugs, development, and peacebuilding.

Drawing upon SOAS’s global networks, you’ll learn from a diverse range of experts that have worked on drug issues.

This course is designed for those involved or interested in the fields of conflict, peace, development, global security, public health, and drug programmes. Activists, researchers, policy makers and individuals working for NGOs will all find it valuable.

• Drugs, development and peacebuilding: the trilemma
• Introduction to the course
• What do you know about drug policies?
• Learning about illicit economies in conflict-affected borderlands
• Drugs, development and peacebuilding: a policy trilemma
• Summarising the week
• Drugs and drug policies
• Introducing the week
• Understanding drugs
• Drug control and drug harms
• Local responses to drugs in Myanmar
• Drugs policy, development policy and peacebuilding: what are the connections?
• Summarising the week
• Peacebuilding, violence and conflict
• Introducing the week
• Peacebuilding, violence and drugs
• The politics of peace in Colombia and resurging violence
• Less conflict, more drugs: experiences of ‘peace’ in Myanmar
• Returning to the policy trilemma
• Summarising the week
• Development
• Introducing the week
• Drugs and sustainable development
• Drugs and development in the borderlands
• Case study 1. Afghanistan: drugs, war and development
• Case study 2. Stories from Colombia’s borderlands
• Rethinking drugs and development
• Summarising the week
• Applying trilemma thinking
• Introducing the week
• Revisiting the drugs, development and peacebuilding trilemma
• Concluding the course