COP7 secrecy severely criticised
The November meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) will lack the transparency and dialogue which underpin United Nations values.
This is one of the claims made in a report by the Australian Institute for Progress (AIP), which was launched yesterday by the former Australian government minister, Dr. Gary Johns.
The launch of the report coincided with the closing date for nominations for the election of the next WHO director-general – September 22.
The seventh FCTC COP (COP7), which is due to be held in New Delhi in November, was refusing entry to relevant stakeholders or media to discuss new developments that could save lives around the world, the AIP said in a story issued through PRNewswire.
“The WHO FCTC is a closed shop which uses exclusion to silence debate,” Johns was quoted as saying. “This is one of the many issues the next WHO director-general must urgently address if the organization is to survive.”
Johns recommends that the convention throw open its doors to all-comers, and to new ideas in a bid to cut deaths from smoking, particularly since vaping products are now considered considerably less harmful than are conventional cigarettes.
“It is my experience, as a former Australian Labor minister, that the most effective policies incorporate a wide range of stakeholders and viewpoints, even if you disagree,” he said. “These meetings should be held in a transparent fashion and in public view.
“The FCTC Secretariat does not have the expertise or resources to deal with two big challenges of the convention: finding a path for reduced harm alternatives to smoking, and tackling illicit trade in tobacco. As long as the sole strategy is to reduce supply and demand without considering every perspective, there will be little progress.”
Johns is concerned that harm reduction is not a focus of the convention, which means that the WHO has pursued a single strategy of supply and demand reduction despite the evidence that smokeless tobacco products could play a key role in a harm reduction strategy.
The AIP pointed out that the United Nations had welcomed world leaders, the media, external stakeholders and the public to the Paris Climate Change Conference in November 2015, hosting 3,000 accredited journalists. It had constantly updated an online news-hub, providing updates on decisions and activity, while also providing an e-mail news update feature. The Paris conference had posted also publicly available drafts of the key texts negotiated at the meeting and webcasts of sessions, debates and press conferences.
But the FCTC provided no such window into its decision-making process with the public, media, industry, law enforcement and other key external stakeholders likely to be barred from entry. Decisions for previous conferences had been posted after the fact with no context as to how they had been reached.
“As a taxpayer in Australia, my taxes support the convention, but it is not certain that I would be allowed to observe the proceedings, such is the secrecy surrounding the convention,” said Johns.
“All interested parties must be allowed to observe COP7 proceedings, as is standard procedure with other United Nations conferences. The alternative is that tobacco consumers will be exposed to more harm than could otherwise be the case.”
The report is at: https://aip.asn.au