by Mridula Tirumalasetti

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

LA PAZ, Bolivia—The U.N. reported that the coca cultivation in Bolivia has declined by nine percent from 2012 to 2013, which is the lowest it has been in 12 years. Bolivia is one of the world’s biggest cocaine producers, third after Peru and Colombia.

In 1961, the U.N. Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which is the U.N.’s main anti-narcotics treaty, banned the coca leaf, as well as drugs produced from the cocoa leaf, including cocaine, heroin, opium, and morphine. In 2012, Bolivia withdrew from the Convention in order to protest the criminalization of ch