COP Live Day Five #COP11 – COPWATCH: a Consumer Guide to FCTC COP

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Welcome back to Copwatch’s COP Live reporting on FCTCCOP11. Here we bring you our observations and impressions on day five.

COP11 agenda progress
The penultimate day for COP11, there will be urgency to get agreement on the outstanding agenda items today. The Journal shows that progress is slow on items 4.3 (environment), 4.4 (Articles 9 and 10) and 4.5 (the Secretariat’s attempt to co-opt harm reduction). We are pleased that Parties are taking the time to discuss such important issues thoroughly. Of course, GATC and ASH would not agree, their bulletins from today show considerable frustration that there is any debate.

Decisions have been approved for agenda items 4.1 (the so called ‘forward looking measures) and 4.2 (liability). New decisions had to be drafted for those. We just hope that the final decisions are better than the ones included in the original COP11 documents. We will have to wait to find out: at COP10 the decisions weren’t published until after the meeting had ended, and this COP’s Decisions page is still empty.

This, from the Journal’s report, has been baffling us:
“The Chairperson opened the session and gave the opportunity to one Party to make their statement on agenda item 4.1 which they could not do yesterday before the agenda item was closed.”
Why wasn’t the Party given the opportunity to give the statement during the discussions? And, what is the point of giving a statement after an agenda item has been agreed? Odd.

A reminder that Clive Bates has authored an excellent side by side commentary on the annotated agenda, you can find that here.

Agenda item 4.4 (articles 9 and 10)
We have written about this in an explainer, here and also this week in COP Live . GATC had urged parties to adopt it without amendment, so they aren’t at all happy that it hasn’t been rushed through. No agreement on Articles 9 and 10 was reached at COP10, is this fail set to be repeated at COP11?

Agenda item 4.5
This is the agenda item based on the Secretariat’s notorious paper on harm reduction (COP11/10).Here is Clive Bates’ overview of that paper:

“The Secretariat has failed to meet the legitimate and sincere request of several Parties for a COP discussion about tobacco harm reduction. It has instead responded with its own activist position and poor-quality reasoning. No delegate, whether for or against tobacco harm reduction, should accept a Convention Secretariat behaving with the dismissive attitude displayed in this paper.”

For a detailed analysis, please see his ‘Agenda Item 4.5 Commentary on FCTC/COP/11/10’

EU controversy
Leaks indicate that Denmark and the European Commission are seeking to introduce bans on vapes and pouches. The controversy comes just a week after EU Member States agreed on a common position for COP11, a position which did not include a call for global bans on safer nicotine products.

More on this from El Nacional (Barcelona)
Controversy at COP11: allegations of a European attempt to ban vapes and nicotine pouches (headline translated from Spanish, by Google)

And, from Pouch Patrol:
Denmark is Trying to Ban Nicotine Pouches in Sweden

And, from eureporter:
HealthRevealed: Secret push for total nicotine prohibition at COP11 – Defying member states and risking over one million EU jobs

This all probably explains why GATC singled out EU member states for criticism this week, as we reported in COP Live Day Three.

Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan got an ashtray award yesterday (shared with Georgia). This article might explain why:
Kazakhstan on the COP11 global stage: Why economic interests matter (Google translate)

The so-called ‘forward looking measures’ are in a COP document authored by tobacco controllers, people with no expertise in trade – and it showed. It looks as though Kazakhstan has had the temerity to question some of those naïve proposals.
From the article – and thanks to Google translate:
“Any changes to international trade rules and supply chains, particularly those related to quotas, directly affect industrial plans, create export risks, and limit the potential for job creation.”
And:
“Kazakhstan called for a dialogue that balances public health goals with socioeconomic realities”

Sounds reasonable, to us

800% budgetary increase
We haven’t written much about FCTC COP finances but we can’t let this one pass by without comment. The WHO’s tobacco budget is currently $1.2 billion. And, they wish to increase it – by 800% – to an eye watering $9 billion.

Do read Ian Irvine’s excellent article on this:
Opinion: The WHO wants nine times more money to control tobacco. Don’t pay!

Statements made during livestreamed plenary debate
Yesterday’s Good COP 2.0 included an excellent discussion on the statements made by countries and NGO’s during the debate (COP11 agenda item 3) which was livestreamed earlier this week. Host Jeannie Cameron had analysed the statements and divided them into 3 tiers. She found that these 7 countries explicitly mentioned harm reduction in their statements: Albania, Gambia, New Zealand, North Macedonia, St Kitts and St Nevis and the Solomon Islands. A bold move, considering that harm reduction as we (the people most affected) know it has now been thoroughly toxified by the Secretariat and Bloomberg NGO’s.

Watch Jeannie with panellists Marina Murphy, Reem Ibrahim and Nancy Loucas on this link, from 30 minutes in:

Good COP2.0TPA’s Good COP2.0 has just ended. The round up of the final day is here, and you can watch it back on YouTube (link). Here is a recent pic with some of the experts who participated: