PUNTA DEL ESTE, URUGUAY: A new investigative report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposes a wide range of tactics employed by the tobacco industry to undermine advances being made by the global tobacco treaty. Threats to health policy include aggressive lobbying and legal intimidation, to charitable donations and even outright payoffs. Read more
Even as Parties meet to discuss how to overcome such obstacles – the primary threat in advancing a treaty the World Health Organization projects could save 200 million lives by 2050 – industry tactics have followed countries to this week’s treaty negotiations in Uruguay.
Not only are dozens of tobacco industry representatives crowding the halls of the negotiation each day, industry is also playing a role in the seating of delegates in attendance. These delegates are the eyes, ears, and voice piece of an industry that has otherwise been prohibited from directly participating in the negotiations and health policy under a core provision of the treaty.
One such example is Zimbabwe, a non-Party observer. Despite being cash strapped, the country somehow mustered the funds to send 10 delegates to Uruguay days after a prominent tobacco industry front group disparaged guidelines being negotiated this week to the Wall Street Journal. To put this in perspective, more than 35 ratifying countries were unable to send even a single representative. Worse, though the treaty requires that health policies and negotiations be protected from “commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry,” Zimbabwe’s delegation includes representatives from the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board, as well as ministries whose priority is either trade or agriculture.
“A reminder is needed that we are here to devise solutions to save people’s lives,” said Sam Ochieng of the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals and Consumer Information Network Kenya. “Progress is not possible if the long arm of industry is able to reach into and manipulate a conversation that rightly excludes Big Tobacco.”
Tobacco growing countries like Zimbabwe may be the most brazen, but are not unique when it comes to sending representatives from ministries whose objectives may be at odds with the treaty’s guiding principle that the public’s health be prioritized over trade. Of the 438 Party delegates listed in the provisional list of participants, 74 delegates represent ministries other than health. Egregious examples include Macedonia’s delegation which has no health ministry representation. Of its 19 member delegation, China sent five delegates from its state-owned tobacco corporation.
While some non-health ministries may have legitimate reason for inclusion in a delegation, such as representation from finance ministries in anticipation of discussions regarding tobacco taxation; for others such appointments further expose the primary obstacle to treaty implementation – the fact that industry has a voice it shouldn’t within government in deciding health policy.
“This is not to say the vast majority of countries here are not acting with integrity, just that Parties must be unified in challenging tobacco industry interference for the treaty to progress,” said Corporate Accountability International’s Latin America Director Yul Francisco Dorado.
In this vein, Uruguay has proposed a resolution calling for Parties to stand together in confronting the manner of legal intimidation it and other countries are now facing from Philip Morris International.
Corporate Accountability International and its partners are pushing for the inclusion of a provision giving the Secretariat representing the Parties to the treaty a voice during legal proceedings. (CNS)
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