Bolivia plans to eradicate 49,000 hectares of coca crops by 2025

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia presented this Monday, May 24, its strategy to fight drug trafficking and control the expansion of coca crops for the period 2021-2025, in which it sets the dismantling of at least a dozen criminal organizations and the eradication of 49,000 hectares of these plantations, among other objectives.

The plan contains four components presented by the Vice-Minister of Social Defense, Jaime Mamani, at an event held in La Paz and representatives of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) European Union.

The characteristics of the five-year plan are based on the “efficient control of the trafficking of controlled substances”, the “sustained reduction of surplus crops”, “the integral prevention of drug consumption,” and the “regionalization of the fight against drug trafficking”, explained Mamani.

THE MAIN GOALS

On the first point, the program set itself the task of “dismantling two criminal organizations” related to drug production every year, and with this to reach the 2025 administration with at least ten of these groups quashed.

One of the main goals in the second point is related to “eradicate” and “rationalize” in the next five years some 49,000 hectares of coca leaf crops to comply with the legal limit contained in the General Coca Leaf Law, approved in 2017, which sets at 22,000 hectares the allowed space in which coca can be planted.

The main weapon put forward by the Bolivian government is the “social control” to be applied by the communities themselves to ration production in permitted areas “so as not to have conflicts.” So that there are no human rights violations, Mamani said.

Mandatory eradication will be applied in unauthorized regions, such as parks or nature reserves.

The objective regarding the prevention of the consumption of illicit substances is to “reduce the prevalence rate of drug consumption” until 2025 through “early intervention” and “rehabilitation” of consumers.

Finally, the regionalization of the fight against drugs is based on “coordination with Bolivia’s neighboring countries”, the signing of bilateral agreements and commitments against drug trafficking, and the execution of joint tasks such as the exchange of information, in addition to multilateral coordination, the vice-minister pointed out.

This strategy, which was previously approved last April 30, after a council of ministers, is a continuation of the one applied during the almost fourteen years of President Evo Morales’ government.

INCREASE IN COCA PLANTATIONS

The current administration of President Luis Arce questioned several times what he has considered as a setback in the fight against drugs, from the political and social crisis that Bolivia faced in 2019 and the management of the interim Government in 2020.

Mamani questioned the reduction of results last year in which he assured there was a considerable decrease in operations, seizures to drug trafficking, and especially the decrease in eradication tasks with 2,000 hectares of coca leaf crops when annually they were up to four times higher.

The latter had caused, according to the Government, the increase in the area of these crops to about 32,000 hectares, according to preliminary studies, when the last UNODC report last year on the situation of crops in 2019 reported 25,550 hectares.