DR ‹ › Moroccan expert Khalid Tinasti has been elected, earlier this March, to a United Nations panel tasked with reshaping global drug policy, during the 69th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna. The 19-member independent panel, established under Resolution 68/6 adopted in March 2025 at Colombia's initiative, is mandated to deliver concrete recommendations by 2027 on the future of the international drug control system, marking the first such exercise since the adoption of UN drug conventions. At 40, Tinasti, a Casablanca native, joins a group of high-level experts from across continents, bringing together expertise in international law, security policy, and global health. The panel's mandate is both technical and political: to identify the limits of the current system and propose reforms without challenging the core architecture of the three international drug control conventions. Educated in Paris and now based in Geneva, Tinasti has built a strong international profile. He began his career in the office of France's Minister for Urban Affairs under the Fillon government before turning to global policy issues. He led the Global Commission on Drug Policy for nearly a decade, bringing together 22 former heads of state, including Kofi Annan, Juan Manuel Santos, and Olusegun Obasanjo and later the Climate Overshoot Commission, chaired by Pascal Lamy. He has also chaired the Programme Advisory Panel of the Robert Carr Fund, focused on HIV prevention among vulnerable populations, and is a member of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's New Generation Network. His academic work has been published in leading journals such as The Lancet, Addiction, and the Brown Journal of World Affairs. He is the author of the Research Handbook on International Drug Policy and a regular contributor to Le Monde, Le Temps, and L'Economiste. He has taught at the University of Geneva and currently lectures at the Graduate Institute (IHEID), while also serving as a David F. Musto Fellow at Shanghai University.
