Djibouti's new penal code sets separate penalties for use and supply

Djibouti’s Penal Code took effect on 16 April 1995 with separate drug offences for use, possession, direct supply to a consumer and wider trafficking. Illicit use carried a one-year prison ceiling, but the code’s general sentencing rules allowed courts to impose just one listed penalty, including a fine alone.

Earlier drug rules had come from France

The territory had published France’s drug law in 1971. After independence, the 1984 pardon decree still referred to those provisions when excluding drug offenders from clemency.

President Hassan Gouled Aptidon promulgated approval of accession to the UN drug conventions in April 1992. The national penal code followed in January 1995. A decree adding its contraventions book, signed by the same president, confirms the April commencement date.

Possession and use were separate offences

Illicit possession, acquisition, transport, offering and supply carried ten years and a fine of 500 million Djiboutian francs. The code provided no numerical personal-use quantity separating possession from that offence.

Illicit use itself carried one year and a 200,000-franc fine. Supplying or offering a drug directly for another person’s consumption carried five years and a 5-million-franc fine. That prison ceiling rose to ten years where minors, educational centres or government premises were involved.

Production, manufacture, import and export carried twenty years and a 500-million-franc fine. Creating or directing a group formed to prepare those production or international-trafficking crimes carried life imprisonment.

Courts could select and reduce the penalties

The general sentencing chapter said a court could impose only one of the penalties available for the offence. It also allowed shorter prison terms and lower fines.

Those rules mattered to a person facing a drug charge: the prison term and fine printed beside an offence were choices subject to the wider sentencing rules. A one-year use ceiling therefore left room for a shorter sentence or a fine alone.

A conviction could also affect work and residence

Courts could impose professional restrictions, suspend or cancel driving licences and confiscate property. Foreigners convicted of specified production, possession, supply or laundering offences could be excluded permanently or for up to ten years. The exclusion clause did not list the separate simple-use offence.

Later, a national drug committee created in 2000 brought prevention, monitoring and coordination under the prime minister. Criminal penalties remained one part of Djibouti’s response to drugs.^[1][2][3]