Dr. Lee Edson P. Yarcia is a lawyer and a physician working in the field of public health and human rights. He currently serves as the National Programme Officer of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in the Philippines, where he manages the Drugs country portfolio, including the innovative international technical cooperation on promoting and protecting human rights in the context of drug control in the Philippines - the United Nations Joint Programme for Human Rights, and the pilot demonstration project Alternatives to Incarceration in the Philippines supported by the United States Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Dr. Yarcia received his bachelor and medical degrees from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine and his Juris Doctor degree from the UP College of Law. He also received further executive education from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on public health leadership, from the University of California San Francisco on public health research, and from the Hague Academy of International Law on advanced courses on international law. He authored publications on drug policy reform and human rights, including “The Politics of Drug Rehabilitation in the Philippines” with the Health and Human Rights Journal, “Articulating Key Obligations of States to Persons Deprived of Liberty Under a Right to Health Framework: The Philippine Case Study” with the International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, and the book chapter “It’s Time to Decriminalize Drug Use: Insights from the Legal History of Prohibition in the Philippines” with the Ateneo Press. Presently, Dr. Yarcia is Senior Lecturer of Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Medical Jurisprudence at the UP College of Law, and teaches Medical Jurisprudence at the UP College of Medicine.