From 29 September to 1 October 2025 in Barcelona (Spain), the UNESCO is convening the World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (MONDIACULT 2025), the major United Nations high-level political meeting on cultural policies.
The Cannabis Embassy has been coordinating the work of local community activists and cannabis cultural stakeholders in providing meaningful contributions to the discussions of the Conference.
Two written contributions were shared with the UNESCO’s Digital Library, and. a Forum will be organised as a parallel event, on 29 September 2025 – exactly 100 years after Cannabis was included in the early Brussels International Pharmacopoeia treaty. (The image on this article shows the “Salle de Marbre” in Brussels’ Academy Palace, where the world pharmacopoeia was adopted with the harmonised monographs for cannabis medicinal ingredients).
More information will be shared soon on this page and the Cannabis Embassy information UNESCO portal.
Technical paper
Cannabis: A Plant Without Borders. Cultural Diagnosis, One Hundred Years After Its Prohibition.
K. Riboulet-Zemouli (independent researcher);
L. Torre (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina);
F. Ghehiouèche (NORML France);
M. Clarke (Fields of Green for ALL and SACHIDA)
Consultation Report
Stakeholder category: Relevant cultural stakeholders: civil society, cultural organizations, educational institutions, non-governmental organizations.
Submission category: Alliance of organizations
K. Riboulet-Zemouli (independent researcher – Spain);
R. Carvajal (Fundación Todo lo que Cultivas, Eleva – Chile)
9 August is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Our Technical Paper shared with UNESCO for the MONDIACULT 2025 Conference reminds of the particularly violent provisions of Article 49 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs against the World’s Indigenous People who have had Cannabis as part of their life and cultures for so long. Find below an excerpt from out Technical Paper:
The Single Convention on narcotic drugs, 1961, created an unprecedented (and so far unmatched) legal obligation to “abolish” and “discontinue as soon as possible” its traditional uses and cultural practices globally.
The Single Convention’s Article 49 mandates the following for “the use of cannabis, cannabis resin, extracts and tinctures of cannabis for non-medical purposes; and the production and manufacture of and trade in” cannabis, when they were “traditional … and … permitted on 1 January 1961”:
“(f) The use of cannabis for other than medical and scientific purposes must be discontinued as soon as possible but in any case within twenty-five years from the coming into force of this Convention as provided in paragraph 1 of article 41;
(g) The production and manufacture … and trade … for any of the uses mentioned therein must be reduced and finally abolished simultaneously with the reduction and abolition of such uses.”
In another provision, Article 2(9), the Single Convention creates a set of legal regulations — not limited in time — applying to “drugs which are commonly used in industry for other than medical or scientific purposes”.
The Convention bans traditional use of drugs for “other than medical or scientific purposes” that existed prior to 1961. However, it allows the “industry” from any point on to enjoy the same drugs for “other than medical or scientific purposes”.
The fundamental discrimination enshrined in this Article 49 is not only a gross violation of international human rights law. It is also a testament to the existence of traditional uses of “cannabis, cannabis resin, extracts and tinctures of cannabis” globally before 1961 — the proceedings of the 1961 diplomatic conference, and decades of discussion prior to that, are supporting information. More importantly, it is a benchmark to assess the evolution and vitality of the rich and diverse cultures associated with cannabis globally, and to design appropriate safeguarding strategies that take into account the complex nature of the threats to the cultural heritages associated with cannabis communities that can be entailed by such discriminative international legal provisions.
Importantly, Article 49 should be understood within its historical context: in 1961, no institutional mechanism existed to document, protect, or safeguard living cultural traditions. It would take more than a decade before the international community adopted the 1972 World Heritage Convention, but it focused primarily on tangible elements. Only with the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage did States begin to formally structure the recognition and safeguarding of living traditions through binding, community-based frameworks. Today, these mechanisms balance the scope and challenge the legitimacy of Article 49.
