Advocacy

It is best practice and the most effective way to achieve genuine and meaningful change for PWUD to lead responses that affect our community.

• AIVL, as the peer-led peak organisation, will demonstrate leadership at the national level and support the leadership of PWUD at state, territory, local, and individual levels where possible.

Criminalisation negatively affects every aspect of the lives of PWUD, undermining efforts to overcome stigma and discrimination, causing health inequity and ensuring PWUD are kept from playing the roles that would best serve our community.

• AIVL will create and use opportunities to lead and advocate for drug law reform at a national level endorsed by our community of PWUD.

Stigma towards people who use drugs fuels the discrimination and marginalisation of PWUD and enables the ongoing human rights abuses of our community, with some of the worst impacts affecting people with intersecting identities such as people who inject drugs, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women and gender diverse people, and culturally and linguistically diverse people. 

• AIVL will strengthen efforts at overcoming stigma and discrimination and advocate for health human rights protections for PWUD, while supporting our community efforts to lead and respond to stigma and discrimination.  

Harm reduction policies, services and resources are the most evidence-informed and effective ways to ensure the minimum health and wellbeing of people who use drugs, yet harm reduction receives the least support and funding in the AOD space of the three pillars of harm minimisation. Despite increasing overdose rates, funding for AOD harm reduction has been effectively reduced compared to demand and supply reduction.

• AIVL will advocate for equitable harm reduction funding, policy reform and support for the best available peer-led harm reduction responses.

Funding for AIVL and its member/peer-led Drug User Organisations (DUOs) in the states and territories is too low, lacking in sustainability and often reliant on short-term grants and one or two government departments. This results in less capacity, control and confidence to provide all the advocacy and activities the community and peer workforce wants to engage in and reduces capacity to achieve better outcomes for the community of PWUD.

• AIVL will create and use opportunities to advocate for a broader range of funding, longer contractual terms and larger amounts of funding to support innovative and essential services led and informed by our community at the national, state and territory levels, and seek opportunities to provide grant funding for peer-led activities and programs.

The AIVL Network of PWUD community-controlled/peer-led Drug User Organisations (DUOs) have been integral to Australia’s successful implementation of harm reduction, HIV and hepatitis C prevention, testing and treatment, safer using education and stigma and discrimination awareness raising and responses.

• AIVL will advocate with and for our member organisations in the states and territories through raising awareness of the importance and effectiveness of DUO-led activities, capacity building, partnerships and collaborations, and supporting community-led engagement and projects.

AIVL and its member organisations have strengthened the efforts of allies and partners throughout the four or more decades of our history by increasing awareness of the impacts of drug and harm reduction-related activities, laws and policies, connecting partners with our communities, and developing relevant and effective ideas, projects and programs for and about our communities.

• AIVL will aim for the leadership and empowerment of PWUD and our organisations in its advocacy and support the genuine involvement of our community members in developing and undertaking networking, guidance and partnership activities.

People who use drugs come from all cultural, socio-economic, gender, age and other identities, and use a wide range of licit and illicit drugs in various ways.

• AIVL will aim to be inclusive of and empower diverse communities of PWUD in ways that recognise complexity and intersectionality, stigma, discrimination and criminalisation.

Effective targeted communication is essential to awareness raising, education, and behaviour and attitude change.

• AIVL will aim to overcome attitudinal and knowledge barriers that impact the community of PWUD using targeted communication in the most effective available formats and support the development of our community in delivering messages of priority to them.

Since the implementation of needle and syringe programs (NSPs) in 1986, there has been significant changes to the types of programs and services available to PWUD across the world, while harm reduction innovation in Australia has largely remained stagnant and limited.

• AIVL will lead innovative advocacy and development of peer-led programs and services that effectively address the growing impact of emerging and new psychoactive substances, synthetic opioids, and increasing rates of overdose and other drug-related harms, including community drug checking services, community-led naloxone and other drug-related overdose response programs, and peer education outreach programs.