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They don't feel any different, but they are making all the difference in Rio de Janeiro's Military Police force. Even though they are a minority, they are now rising to command positions. According to PMERJ General Commander Colonel Mário Sérgio, with the exception of only a few roles that may engage in armed confrontation, all doors are open to women at the PMERJ, and they are key to Rio de Janeiro's UPPs.

133 journalists died in 2009, according to the International News Safety Institute, and most journalists die of attacks committed in peacetime, because of their trade. 9 out of 10 these murders around the world go unprosecuted. Comunidad Segura spoke to Rodney Pinder, head of the institute that is the first of its kind to focus on preventing the risks journalists run, and keeping track of those who fell in the line of duty.

More people every day choose to plant their own cannabis in Brazil, instead of buying it in the streets. When arrested they are in a limbo, subject to a the law that neither sentences them to prison nor regulates the activity.  Self cultivation grows in Brazil, and with it, the controversy.

As growing consensus gathers momentum on the failure of drug proibition to eradicate illegal drugs, growing uncertainty mounts with respect to the world after the end of the war on drugs. Steve Rolles, from the  United Kingdom's Tranform Foundation, has a detailed proposal for what that new world would look like, a world in which drug use is not banned, but regulated.

Most people who are behind bars in various countries around the world are in jail because their offenses are associated with the drug trade, they are poor and they belong to ethnic minorities. Deborah Small, founder of Break the Chains, gave an exclusive interview to Comunidad Segura on the distortions of the war on drugs, urging for change.

There are very big words present in Haiti’s recent history, revolution, poverty, natural disasters, gangs, dictators, soldiers in foreign fatigues. But things are not so simple. According to Small Arms Survey Director of Research Robert Muggah, there are a many misconceptions about Haiti, as he explains in an exclusive interview given to Comunidad Segura.

A bill introduced in the past week in the US congress would end the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine that sent hundreds of youths to prison. After crime rates have dropped and crack prices have fallen, is crack use still associated to violence? What kind of social harm is caused by cocaine derivative?

The second meeting of the Brazilian Commission on Drugs and Democracy scheduled for the last week of October, will focus on two deleterious aspects of the traffic in illegal drugs and the war on drugs policy: urban violence and institutional corruption.

Former Drugs Czar in the United Kingdom, and current director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, Mike Trace discusses the drop in drug related crime in the 90s and the current challenge that faces Britain, how to approach the nation's high drug use, especially of cannabis.

It took a long while to arrive in Rio de Janeiro, but in half a dozen years it has become an inescapable reality in the lives of the city’s most vulnerable residents: its homeless. A recent survey estimates that approximately 90% of the children and youths sleeping rough and living on Rio’s sidewalks use crack, the cocaine derivative that is easy to use, low cost and quick to act, having irrevocably replaced glue.