On 29 April, Commissioners Helen Clark and Adeeba Kamarulzaman spoke at the Women Deliver Conference in Melbourne, Australia, during the side event, “Women and the War on Drugs: Abolishing the Death Penalty and Centering Resistance to Gendered Drug Policy”.

The hybrid event brought together partners including Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL), Women and Harm Reduction International Network (WHRIN), Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat (LBHM – Community Legal Aid Institute Indonesia), and World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP), with support from Monash University Eleos Justice, Harm Reduction International (HRI), Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN), and Capital Punishment Justice Project. The event explored the gendered impacts of punitive drug policy, centering women’s lived experience and collective resistance, with the death penalty as its harshest expression.

Commissioner Clark provided opening remarks, emphasizing the human rights and gender equality consequences of punitive drug policies, and condemning the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses. She recalled the case of Mary Jane Veloso, a domestic worker from the Philippines sentenced to death in Indonesia despite compelling evidence that she was an unwitting courier and victim of human trafficking. Although her execution was stayed hours before it was due to take place following intervention by the Philippine government, she remains incarcerated, now on Philippine soil – a stark example of how punitive drug policies impose severe costs on the most vulnerable while failing to disrupt organized criminal systems.

Commissioner Kamarulzaman then spoke on gendered drug policy, highlighting the disproportionate and intersecting impacts of prohibition and criminalization on women and gender-diverse people, including higher HIV risk, increased incarceration, family separation, child removal, and exposure to the death penalty. She emphasized that more effective and humane responses should prioritize decriminalization alongside harm reduction, treatment, and wraparound family and legal services tailored specifically to the needs of women and gender-diverse people.