• March 19, 2024

Who can attend FCTC meetings?

 Who can attend FCTC meetings?

Delegates who should represent dozens of countries could be banned from participating in the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), according to a story by Yael Ossowski for the Huffington Post relayed by the TMA.

The conference is scheduled to take place in Delhi, India, on November 7-12.

Ossowski said that internal documents obtained from the FCTC showed that the organizers were acting so as to ‘ensure the exclusion of representatives and officials from…fully or partially state-owned tobacco industries, including state tobacco monopolies’.

The policy of banning delegates having associations with tobacco production is said to be ‘so broad that it will almost certainly prohibit finance ministers, economic development secretaries, public health officials, and even presidents and prime ministers representing countries that operate state-owned tobacco growing or manufacturing operations, or engage in marketing and trade efforts’.

Ossowski said that countries such as China, Cuba, Egypt, Bulgaria, Thailand and even the host, India, could face difficulty in getting their delegates approved to attend the event and vote on tobacco control issues.

The documents show that the FCTC justifies the possible exclusion of delegates of some countries from attending the event by saying those tobacco-producing countries “may have prevented public health interests from prevailing in the policy discussions”.