VIENNA - A high-level meeting in Vienna considered international community support to Afghan-led efforts to address drug production and trafficking through a balanced and integrated approach, including regional initiatives.

The High-Level Meeting of Partners for Afghanistan and Neighbouring Countries was co-chaired by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, Afghanistan’s Minister of Counter Narcotics, Salamat Azimi, and the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov.

Participants included ministerial level officials and heads of drug control agencies from West and Central Asia, along with senior representatives from key partner countries and international organizations.

The meeting was framed around Security Council resolution 2210 of 16 March 2015, which, in part, calls upon states to strengthen international and regional cooperation to counter the threat to the international community posed by the production, trafficking and consumption of illegal drugs originating in Afghanistan.

Security Council resolution 2210, as a whole, provides the mandate for UNAMA’s work in Afghanistan.

Participants at the Vienna meeting reviewed national and regional cooperation activities, and identified further partnership responses to effectively support Afghanistan and the region in the implementation of immediate and longer-term approaches to countering narcotics and related transnational organized crime.

According to UNODC’s ‘Afghanistan Opium Survey 2015’, an estimated 183,000 hectares were under opium poppy cultivation in 2015, a 19 per cent decrease from 2014. Ninety-seven per cent of total opium cultivation in Afghanistan took place in the Southern, Eastern and Western regions, which include the country’s most insecure provinces.