Supporting the bi-regional dialogue and facilitating evidence-based decision making
Maintained reinforcement and support to the EU-CELAC Coordination and Cooperation Mechanism on drugs, it’s one of COPOLAD duties. In this working line, COPOLAD promotes new opportunities for the exchange of information, coordination and cooperation between the competent authorities, responsible for drugs policies in the countries of both regions. On the COPOLAD’s website, any interested country or institution can find a complete record of the declarations of the EU-CELAC Mechanism in the field of drugs since its creation, as well as its background, objectives and working procedures.
The virtual ground is also useful for supporting national drug Agencies in the formulation of evidence-based policies by creating new thematic forums to debate over such policies through this tool, according to the needs of the ongoing workgroups, dealing with relevant topics. In that way, the COPOLAD e-room, provides a really dynamic working ground for quick and efficient exchange of information and cooperation between countries and working groups.
At the programme's website sources of external information are collected and information resources updated. Special mention deserves the section compiling the evaluation of strategies and national drug plans, elaborated by the EU and CELAC countries. This section, constantly updated, feeds on the documents shared by countries, so we encourage all interested countries to send us updates at info@copolad.eu
To ensure an increasingly fluent communication between the different actors, as well as to facilitate access to the available evidence, the COPOLAD site hosts different resources selected and disseminated through the news alert BITS COPOLAD and the newsletter ATLAS, being this edition an example. In addition, various sections included in BITS, such as publications and articles are constantly updated on the website.
As a cross-cutting support element to facilitate searches for evidence-based information, the BIDA virtual library (Ibero-American Library on Drugs and Addictions) remains available for easily identifying scientific articles and other quality documents. BIDA provides direct access to articles not settle in an "open source" platform, facilitating the access to any article. This service is maintained by the cooperative collaboration established by ten Documentation Centres belonging to the National Drug Agencies of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and Uruguay, in coordination with the documentation centre of the Government Delegation for the National Plan on Drugs of Spain.
COPOLAD Annual Conference
By the end of 2018, we have started the preparatory work linked to organizing the 2019 COPOLAD Annual Conference to be held in June. It will be organized in close coordination with the EU-CELAC Coordination and Cooperation Mechanism on drugs. As in previous years, it will be held back to back to the High-Level meeting of the Mechanism, as a good example of the close coordination maintained between COPOLAD and the Mechanism Technical Committee. COPOLAD will also be working closely with the Diplomatic representation of Suriname in Brussels, since this country will be holding in 2019 the CELAC’s co-presidency of the EU-CELAC Mechanism. The Conference will take place in Suriname. On the part of the European Union, Romania is the country that holds during this semester the European co-presidency. Coordination efforts with both countries will be intense during this semester, with the aim of ensuring success in achieving the objectives of this 4th COPOLAD II Annual Conference, following up on the one celebrated in Sofia (Bulgaria) In 2018.
