For over a decade, ICEERS’ legal defense program, also known as the Ayahuasca Defense Fund (ADF), has supported people facing prosecution for practices involving ayahuasca — nearly 500 cases across 49 countries since 2014. Time and again, the same gap shows up: the international legal instruments that protect these practices exist, but they are scattered across treaties, court rulings, and UN reports that few people outside specialized legal circles ever read together.
The International Legal Architecture for Ayahuasca answers that gap. It is a publication that maps, for the first time in a single place, the international legal architecture relevant to ayahuasca: the binding treaties, the human rights jurisprudence, the drug control framework, and the practical defense strategies that connect them.
What the publication covers
Its twenty chapters are organized in four acts:
- Instruments & jurisprudence — from ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the Inter-American Court’s Indigenous rights case law, and the international human rights covenants (ICCPR, ICESCR).
- Policy frameworks — how the UN drug control system actually works, the Nagoya Protocol on traditional knowledge, and the scientific criteria that determine whether restricting people’s access to a substance is warranted.
- Emerging challenges — the patent boom around psychoactive plants and their components, the globalization of ayahuasca practices into new jurisdictions, and the right to health and to science.
- Strategy and future — six defense strategies used in ADF-supported cases, an emergency protocol, a regional analysis of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, and a closing reflection on what comes next.
Each chapter works as a standalone reference, so a lawyer preparing a defense, an Indigenous leader planning to travel, a researcher navigating regulatory barriers, or a community member who simply wants to understand the legal landscape can start wherever it’s most useful to them.
Why this matters now
The legal position of ayahuasca is often misunderstood, including by the people enforcing the law. No plant or plant decoction is listed in any UN drug control convention, and the International Narcotics Control Board has confirmed this repeatedly since 2010. And yet enforcement varies enormously between countries — from constitutional protection to outright prohibition — and Indigenous practitioners crossing borders face the greatest legal exposure.
By compiling the legal foundations in one place, ICEERS hopes to give lawyers, advocates, and communities a shared reference point — one that can travel with a defense case, inform a policy conversation, or simply help someone understand what protects them and what doesn’t.
The publication is being presented at the World Ayahuasca Forum 2026 (Girona, September 11 to 13), where Jesús Alonso Olamendi will give a talk dedicated to this work. If you’re attending the Forum, it’s a chance to go deeper in person into what sits behind this decade of casework. Check the program and register here. Beyond the event, the document is meant to serve as an ongoing resource.