A hub for safety, advocacy, and dialogue around traditional Indigenous medicines
At ICEERS, we approach the globalization of Indigenous medicines through three interconnected core areas—Mitigating Harms and Consequences, Co-Creating Collaborative Pathways, and International Monitoring and Research—each reinforcing and enhancing the others.
Mitigating Harms and Consequences
We are doing
Our Legal Defense Program has supported over 390 legal cases in 47 countries (to date), protecting the rights of those who face prosecution related to traditional medicines, while opening the path toward respectful laws and policies.
El Faro Support Center has offered free integration and crisis support to nearly 2000 people as they navigate challenges and crises from plant medicine experiences, and more than 1200 medical and drug interaction queries – avoiding the escalation into serious harm.
Our Technical Support to Indigenous Partners has supported Indigenous-led efforts in Gabon and the Americas as they safeguard their living territories, communities, cultures, and ancestral knowledge systems.
Our work Mobilizing Knowledge through over 100 publications, reports, and harm reduction and integration courses has significantly contributed to elevating ethics and safety globally. Our courses have been attended by more than 1000 plant medicine facilitators and public & mental health professionals.
Co-Creating Collaborative Pathways Towards Ethical and Harmonious Futures
We leverage our frontline experience, research, and global engagement to co-create collaborative, interdisciplinary and intercultural pathways that allow plant medicine globalization to contribute to harmonious and regenerative futures. This work is emergent and complex, grounded in two core pillars:
- Community Practices Framework
- Alliance of Knowledge Systems
We are doing
ICEERS has supported grassroots self-regulation in over 60 gatherings across a dozen countries, working with 1,000+ facilitators to strengthen cultures of care and accountability.
We are co-developing a consensus-based framework for ayahuasca regulation—adaptable to diverse contexts and built through inclusive consultation.
The goal is to ensure practices remain ethically grounded, culturally respectful, and rooted in their spiritual and ecological origins, while regulation supports rather than erodes community integrity.
One of ICEERS’ main goals is to ensure onto-epistemological diversity at the heart of cultural and social processes globally.
By fostering dialogue and reflection among diverse knowledge holders, we aim to open pathways for truly intercultural, inclusive, and co-creative ways of knowing and being.
By weaving alliances between the diversity of knowledge systems that plant medicines are part of, we can — in complementary ways — jointly analyze the root causes of our global crises, learn from each other, and allow for deeper understandings to emerge.
International Monitoring and Research
We actively monitor and research the global expansion of plant medicine practices, gathering crucial data, observations, and insights into the challenges and complexities of this phenomenon.
We are doing
We contribute to the scientific understanding of traditional plant medicines through rigorous, impact-driven research. With over 100 peer-reviewed publications, ICEERS is the most widely published research group on ayahuasca and has uniquely monitored its globalization over the past decade.
Our work has supported court rulings, informed public policy, and reached thousands of students through our educational programs. Notably, we conducted the world’s first clinical trial on ibogaine for opioid dependency.