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

COP11 business
Check out the official Journal 3 for today’s official business and a report on yesterday.   

NGO bulletins / brainwashings 
As is usual, the NGO briefings are revealing more than the official Journal does about the mood music at FCTC COP.

Today we focus on GATC’s day three bulletin, but do also check out ASH’s report on day 2, to see just how entitled these NGO’s feel to denigrate sovereign Parties (“the antis”),  who do not agree with them. An example:
“apparently the Parties opposed either didn’t read or didn’t understand, bellowing that the decision is an assault on sovereignty” 
Those are delegates of our elected governments that ASH are referring to!

EU common position
GATC’s bulletin begins by calling out the dissenting EU member states. This is curious, because the deliberations around reaching the EU’s common position on COP are supposed to be private.  Whilst it is true that there have been several leaks relating to the doomed struggles to reach a common position – the so called ‘forward looking measures’ having provoked such a backlash – GATC’s privileged position should prevent it from revealing what should be confidential information.  

This section ends with the appeal that “the world is watching”. Sorry to break this to you, GATC, but…thanks to the secretive nature of the COP meetings, thanks to there being more compelling events for the world’s media to focus on, and thanks to the fact that people who smoke have been so thoroughly stigmatised – no, the world is not watching. The world doesn’t care much about FCTC COP.  But actually, we suspect that suits you just fine.  

GATC is misleading Parties on the so called ‘forward looking measures’  
This relates to agenda item 4.1 – which is concerned with FCTC article 2.1.

The GATC bulletin states that: 

“1 (a) of the draft decision mentions, several times, that Parties are simply invited to “consider the forward-looking tobacco control measures… with a view to their potential adoption and implementation by Parties.”

What GATC fails to mention is that 1 ( C ) of that same draft decision asks Parties

“to report, as part of their reporting obligations on their implementation of the Convention, on implementation of forward-looking tobacco control measures that expand or intensify approaches to tobacco control, and that may be contemplated within the scope of Article 2.1, including lessons and outcomes arising from the implementation of such Measures;”

For that draft decision see annex 3 in FCTC/COP11/5

GATC’s omission is disingenuous, to put it politely.  As Clive Bates writes, “There should not be an FCTC reporting obligation on measures that fall outside the FCTC.”  Once there are reporting obligations, there is political pressure to implement the measures.  See Clive Bates’  WHO FCTC COP-11 Forward-looking tobacco control measures a delegate’s guide for much more on this agenda item.  

The vile ashtray award
As we suspected, there were just too many rebels amongst the Parties yesterday to single any of them out.  So, GATC decided to award a group of unnamed parties today – but on the entirely false premise that 2.1 would not impose new obligations.  As we have shown above, it would.  

Articles 9 and 10 
GATC urges parties to adopt the Bureau’s draft decision on Articles 9 & 10 without amendment.  Not once do they mention that the guidelines are only partial, they are not finished.  

Key guidelines on toxicity and attractiveness haven’t been developed. If developed, they would highlight the vast differences in risk between combustible and harmful oral tobaccos and the safer nicotine products, such as vapes, snus, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco products. 

Completing the guidelines would bring in harm reduction, something that GATC, the secretariat and the other Bloomberg NGOs wish to avoid.  Indeed, it is the issues around harm reduction which has prevented progress being made on the guidelines. 

GATC urges against the reestablishment of a working group. We wrote previously about this democracy denying impulse, see here:
FCTC bureaucrats have decided national delegations just get in the way

See our explainer for more on this agenda item:  The saga of Articles 9 and 10.  Our article includes a link to the partial guidelines – which you won’t find in the GATC materials. 

Parties have finally noticed that they are being shut out 
Many parties in their opening statements expressed their wish to have more involvement in the work of FCTC between the COPs.  They are registering their displeasure at being shut out by the secretariat and Bloomberg funded NGOs. Here are just two examples, but this sentiment was voiced many times during the debate:

“However, the future of the Framework Convention must be shaped by a process led by the parties, an inclusive and transparent process which is based on good governance. The strength of the convention resides in its multilateral nature. Its legitimacy depends on the full and equal participation of all parties, whatever their level of development or their institutional capacity.”
Guinea-Bissau

“Parties must be meaningfully involved in the preparation of reports, the development of proposals, and monitoring of progress. This includes timely access to documentation, opportunities for consultation, and transparency in how inputs are considered.”
Antigua and Barbuda

We have written about the FCTC’s taste for secret meetings before, for example:
WHO is invited to the Global Tobacco Regulators Forum?

These secret meetings with cherry picked participants are not a recent development – that article is from 2022 –  but it seems that more and more Parties have finally had enough. 

This lack of participation by the Parties in FCTC is illustrated perfectly by the stark fact that there are currently no working groups at FCTC COP. We have written about the secretariat’s fondness for expert groups over working groups a few times, recently here and here. The main point is that a working group is made up of parties, an expert group is comprised of “experts” chosen by the secretariat.  

GATC’s misrepresentation of the supporters of harm reduction 
Ignore that people like us adopted tobacco harm reduction, long before the tobacco industry sold any reduced risk nicotine products.   We consumers have been calling for THR to be included in FCTC COP for many years, but we are ignored and shut out.  Not one group representing people who smoke or people who have quit smoking using nicotine products has ever been granted observer status at any of these COPs.

We want here to take the opportunity to thank Canada – whose statement included that:
“We must continue to address tobacco related inequities and to listen and engage with people with lived experience.”

More of that, please! 
GATC also ignores that harm reduction is already in the treaty, in article 1 (d):

GATC on science
Again, misleading – GATC fails to mention there is a vast body of science not produced by industry which demonstrates that vapes, snus, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco products are far less harmful to health than combustible and harmful oral products.  For a comprehensive yet accessible collection of resources on that, please see Clive Bates’ Tobacco harm reduction: evidence briefs for policymakers.
In September the FDA made an announcement, which included this:

Does GATC know more about science than the FDA?  We don’t think so – but they certainly have the chutzpah to think they might.

You are welcome at Good COP 2.0
The conversation you can join is TPA’s Good COP 2.0, which is taking place in Geneva and streamed on YouTube.  Everyone is welcome – if you are in Geneva and want to stop by just go to Hotel Royal Geneve and pick up a guest lanyard from the TPA reception desk on the first floor. Check out the program for the sessions and speakers. Today’s looked at the scientific, consumer, and regulatory realities facing more than 600 million smokers across the Asia-Pacific region. 

Visit TPA’s YouTube channel to stream the live sessions and also watch back on the past two days. And, catch RegWatch’s special coverage of Good COP 2.0 here: 

https://regulatorwatch.com/brent_stafford/good-cop-2-0-day-3-of-5-regwatch-live

That’s all for today 

#THRWorks