Ines is a psychologist, master in social policy. She has been a colombian referent and promoter of the paradigm shift in drug policies and harm reduction since the late 90's, leading research, training, public policy to amplify the scope and consolidate harm reduction under a rights, health and social lensis.

In the absence of welfare states and in the face of humanitarian crises that change the social landscape and community dynamics, a broad spectrum of harm reduction that incorporates an intersectional, community and social justice perspective is needed.

I will explain why Colombia is an example of this transition, incorporating for more than two decades a community-based approach to harm reduction, based on social inclusion and reducing the suffering of those who use drugs.

I will start from Lomnitz's classic work on how the marginalized survive, in which he transcends the view of marginality as deprivation and invites us to understand the power of mutual aid networks and community as survival mechanisms based on the use of social resources and peer-to-peer exchange. I will explain how, in the Colombian context, this vision of community as a transformative agent allows not only to survive in marginality and transform narratives of stigma and exclusion, but also to reduce harm and risk. It also explains the rare Colombian example of successful integration between civil society, communities and institutions that, like users, very often have to work from the margins to survive political agendas.

It is a harm reduction that transcends medicalized and highly institutionalized health models. An approach that recognizes that vulnerability is not centered on drug use but on the living conditions and context that amplify and sustain exclusion, violence and stigma: a way of materializing the rights approach and incorporating an idea of community as an active agent with its own resources that facilitates change from within.