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

Live streaming 
The live streaming of agenda item 3 continued in this morning’s session. The asterisks on the agenda denote which sessions will be live streamed. So, no more streaming is expected until the final day. 

You can access the videos for all the live streamed sessions on the COP11 homepage:

Country statements 
Started yesterday, these continued during the 3rd plenary session today. More on those another time but we were really pleased to hear Albania, Guinea-Bissau, North Macedonia, Guyana and St Kitts and Nevis push back against the edicts of the Bloomberg NGO’s and the Secretariat.  Internet issues caused us to lose track but World Vapers Alliance again did tremendous work on live tweeting, see their thread here:
https://x.com/vapers_alliance/status/1990704551004156157 

Propaganda briefs
Yesterday we correctly predicted that New Zealand would get the ashtray award. Given how many Parties rebelled today, we wouldn’t like to predict who will get it tomorrow – could five or more ashtrays get awarded?  Although…bullying surely works best when parties can be singled out, not when there are so many of them. As a preventative measure, it certainly doesn’t seem to be working as intended – could this be the beginning of the end for these notorious and nasty awards?

Our baddies award for today would surely go to the International Pharmaceutical Federation delegate, who gave this statement to COP : 

“May I categorically state for the record that the misnomer of harm reduction is completely at odds with therapies available through pharmacist consultation and please know Madam Chair that pharmacists will take every opportunity to counter this narrative of greed and death.”

How can that NOT be viewed as a conflict of interest?

GATC’s propaganda briefing is all about NGO activity and pushing the party line – we didn’t see any reporting on what Parties had said during the actual COP proceedings (rather than the NGO planned side events).  However, that briefing is rather long and we confess we didn’t get through it all – did anyone? 

Firebreak investigation 
David Zaruk has published an excellent investigation into the 29 WHO approved civil society organisations admitted to the FCTC COP11 – Mapping Bloomberg’s Billions Against Tobacco Harm Reduction. 

Alongside that, do look at the list of NGO participants at COP11, in the Provisional list of participants, (page 49 onwards).  These include:
African Tobacco Control Alliance – 35 delegates
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids – 31 delegates
European Network for Smoking Prevention – 38 delegates
Global Alliance for Tobacco Control – 61 delegates
Smoke-free Partnership – 10 delegates
University of Bath – 12 delegates
Vital Strategies – 6 delegates
And yet –  not one single organisation representing people with lived experience of smoking or quitting smoking using consumer products has ever graced an FCTC COP participants list.

Keeping track of COP11 progress
Now that COP11’s business is being conducted well behind closed doors we recommend you look at the daily official Journals (here’s today’s), to get a sense of how the agenda is progressing.  From some of the statements given by Parties earlier, we predict that there are stormy seas ahead for the secretariat and Bloomberg funded NGOs – we don’t see them getting many of their pet policies adopted. Let’s hope we are right. 

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. Today’s speakers have included David Williams, Martin Cullip, Marina Murphy, Maria Papaioannoy, Gabriel Oke, Liza Katsiashvili, Heneage Mitchell, Jeffrey Zamora, Carmen Escrig, Diego Verrastro, Julio Ruades, Mark Tyndall, Roberto Sussman, Konstantinos Farsalinos, Juan Jose Cirio, Sharifa Ezat, Benjamin Elks and Jeannie Cameron. Tomorrow’s programme will have an Asia focus.   

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-2-of-5-regwatch-live

That’s all for today 

#THRWorks