An update from us at COPWATCH, on the final day of COP11.
COP business The Journal shows that discussions are ongoing today for items 4.4 and 4.5. As we have been reporting this week, those are both highly controversial. Will COP manage to reach consensus on those today?
Since yesterday, it appears that there has been a decision on Article 18 (environment). It looks as though we’ll have to wait until COP has ended to see the final decisions.
Some livestreaming is expected today, but it will be dull set piece stuff. The asterisks on the provisional agenda denote what will be streamed:
There’s also a ‘hybrid’ press conference today, at 14.00 CET. We don’t know if that will be accessible to everyone, or just the registered media.
The propaganda briefings ASH seems to have gone home early. Their latest offering is an article about what wasn’t on the agenda, so it doesn’t tell us much about what was.
Seems the NGO’s are chasing tobacco industry funding now, all those Bloombucks just aren’t enough!
GATC’s effort includes their usual regret at Parties not just going along with what they want, expressed in the usual kindergarten teacher tone. And, of course, the awards:
Having championed harm reduction in their opening statement, St Kitts and Nevis have clearly continued their good work behind the closed doors of the committees.
We may issue another update later – but, if not, we’ll be back another time soon.
Welcome back to Copwatch’s COP Live reporting on FCTCCOP11. Here we bring you our observations and impressions on day four.
COP11 business See the official Journal for today’s events, the programme of work and a report on yesterday. From the GATC and ASH bulletins we learn that work continued late into the night. Perhaps the authors went to bed before the work stopped – they don’t report that a decision was reached on 4.1 (the so called ‘forward looking’ measures), we gathered that from the Journal.
The ASH bulletin includes that there is debate ongoing in the discussions on agenda items 4.2 ( Article 19, Liability) and 4.3 (Article 18, Environment).
Decision on 4.1 – the so called ‘forward looking measures’ This is from today’s Journal (day 4):
It will be interesting to see what was agreed, as this was a highly controversial agenda item, as many countries pointed out in their statements in the streamed plenary sessions. (We hope to bring you more on those country statements later, if we get time – there are many more interesting statements than at the last COP)
GATC awards As Jake Maderazo reminds us, in his excellent ‘The Misuse of Tobacco-Control Awards’, the ghastly Orchid and Ashtray awards are orchestrated by an outside observer. That is the role conferred on GATC by the treaty – GATC is merely an ‘outside observer’. Maderazo writes:
“The Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC), which hands out these “awards”, is merely an observer. When outside actors such as the GATC begin to masquerade as scorekeepers and moral arbiters—handing out Orchids and Ashtrays according to a narrow ideological script—the clarity of that architecture erodes.”
Yesterday, Brazil got the pat on the back and Tajikistan the slap on the wrist:
Of course, these awards are designed to influence discussions taking place behind closed doors – thoroughly debasing the complex business of negotiation between sovereign nations. The Orchid is always given for following the Bloomberg funded cabal’s wishes. The Ashtray is more interesting, as it hints at the obstacles to those wishes.
Tajikistan’s ‘sin‘ So, what has Tajikistan done to deserve today’s Ashtray? Their statement from the live streamed plenary debate (3rd session) was fairly innocuous. Their statement included a call for “open evidence-based dialogue on all types of tobacco and nicotine products”, but then, so did many other country statements.
Statement given by Tajikistan in the plenary debate (agenda item 3)
So, the misdemeanour must have occurred behind closed doors. The reason given for putting Tajikistan on the naughty step are that they have dared to suggest that illicit trade might be an obstacle. For anyone following tobacco related events in the real world, the issues around illicit trade are urgent and real – Australia is the poster child for this. But for GATC and the other Bloomberg allies, illicit trade is an inconvenient truth. In Trumpian style, an inconvenient truth simply isn’t a truth and anyone who says otherwise is an enemy.
A reminder to any delegates reading this: “The Parties have not reached any sort of consensus on regulating ENDS or other reduced risk products, other than that they should be regulated in some way – no one disputesthat. The question that the Parties wish to address is how to regulate these products in the publicinterest, taking account of both risks and opportunities, in a world of 1 billion people who smoke,ongoing demand for nicotine, and high potential for illicit trade in response to excessive regulation.” Taken from Clive Bates’ Commentary on FCTC/COP/11/10
GATC sees all products as a risk. This is a denial of the real world evidence that safer alternatives to risky tobacco use are reducing smoking, in countries such as New Zealand, Japan, Sweden and the UK. See Clive Bates’ evidence briefs for policy makers for a thorough look at the evidence available.
And, we’d like to highlight the importance of the Cochrane gold standard reviews. Since its first publication in 2014, the Cochrane Review on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation has been published as a “living systematic review”. It has been regularly updated as new evidence becomes available – the latest was published just ten days ago:
Despite being the gold standard, Cochrane’s review on e-cigarettes is omitted from all WHO and Bloomberg NGO publications – including GATC’s article from today. Another of those inconvenient truths!
And, published in the BMJ just two days ago, Sarah Jackson’s Rapid response brings some common sense to bear on GATC’s excessively precautionary approach:
“Protecting children is essential, and inappropriate youth exposure to nicotine requires balanced regulation. However, using the Convention for the Rights of the Child to justify an overarching goal to reduce vaping among children neglects meaningful harm-reduction benefits and may lead to near identical regulation of e-cigarettes and cigarettes that inadvertently entrenches smoking. A balanced, evidence-led approach that acknowledges a dual goal to also maximise the opportunities of vaping to help adults quit smoking would better advance the Convention’s aims.” Rapid response to: How e-cigarettes compromise children’s human rights, BMJ
Back to the GATC article – notice the emphasis which GATC added to this footnote:
Don’t worry, pharma – GATC has your back!
Ashtrays in the wild We do feel sorry for some of the COP11 delegates – exposed to much misinformation about safer alternatives, it is no wonder they find it hard to quit smoking. Yesterday’s Ola Journal showed an ashtray with signs of recent use, outside the Geneva International Conference Center. (The ashtray was removed, soon after the picture had been published)
Happily, some kind advocates for tobacco harm reduction could pass by the venue later, to demonstrate to COP11 delegates how it’s done (you can thank them later!).
Permission given to Copwatch to use this photo (not to you, Tobacco Tactics)
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 programme for the sessions and speakers. Today’s reviewed the highlights from the opening plenary statements, discussed Michael Bloomberg’s philanthro-colonialism, asked why institutions which claim to want an end to smoking oppose practical solutions which can work, and delved into the situation and future of harm reduction in the US, Canada and Mexico.
Visit TPA’s YouTube channel to stream the live sessions and also watch back on the past two days. And, catch this morning’s RegWatch special coverage of Good COP 2.0 here.
The official FCTC journals are published daily on the COP11 website, during COP week. Those are accessible via the COP11 homepage – look for ‘Journals’ in the Documentation section. The official preliminary Journal was published on 3 November, with the target readership of delegates to FCTC COP.
Our readership, however, is mostly people who are denied entry to the official proceedings. So, here is Copwatch’s preliminary journal, with useful information for unofficial COP observers like us.
Social media There is confusion over one of the the official hashtags. @FCTCofficial and the observer NGO’s have been using #FCTCCOP11 for some time – but the preliminary journal reverses it, to #COP11FCTC. This is probably a typo, as @FCTCofficial is still using #FCTCCOP11.
However, whatever the official hashtag, it’s likely that tobacco harm reduction advocates will dominate the COP11 social media discourse – as happens at every FCTC COP.
COPWATCH live Next week we will be reporting daily on COP. We will be publishing a post at the end of each day, to share with you whatever scraps we have managed to learn about what is going on inside the International Conference Centre in Geneva. You can also follow us on X for updates.
The COP11 agenda The Provisional agenda is published on the COP11 website. However, you could just go straight to Clive Bates’ Commentary on the Annotated Agenda, for the agenda plus analysis. If you don’t have time to read that, here’s a neat list with the main issues, taken from Clive Bates’ At a Glance: WHO FCTC COP-11 document:
And, several of our own Copwatch articles in recent months have discussed some of the specific agenda items, all our COP11 articles are listed here.
Live streaming Some of the COP proceedings will be live streamed, see the asterisked items on the agenda for those. The livestream will be hosted on the COP11 home page.
We hope that again the country statements will be live streamed – it’s the only chance we’ll get to hear what the delegates sent by our elected governments will be saying in our name, at FCTC COP. In the afternoon on the first day there are two livestreamed events which are not part of the official proceedings (but which are absolutely designed to influence the outcome of those proceedings) – the ministerial round table, which we wrote about here, and this strategic dialogue.
NGO briefings (brainwashings) Speaking of propaganda, the favoured NGO’s have been busy putting out briefs designed to deter Parties from agreeing to anything which goes against the official Bloomberg/FCTC Secretariat line. The Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC) briefs are here, those from the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC) are here. Expect to see those being weaponised further, next week. Look out too for the Dirty Ashtray awards, where Parties not toeing the anti tobacco harm reduction line will be publicly shamed – those will be announced in GGTC’s daily bulletins.
Further reading Clive Bates’ FCTC COP-11 – a survival guide for delegates has an excellent collection of resources on FCTC COP11. These include links to articles and critiques and the Expert Wall, where statements from independent experts are being collected.
Well – we survived! Copwatch has been taking a breather, to digest what happened last month at COP10. Getting confirmation of what had happened took time, because the decisions were slow to arrive on the official website – presumably written to paint the event in the most positive light possible.
The live coverage on these pages revealed frustration amongst the FCTC ranks which was echoed by the head of the Secretariat, Adriana Blanco Marquizo, remarking at the end of the conference that her organisation had “survived”.
FCTC Pravda hailed “historic decisions” and announced that the meeting was a triumph, as it always does, but articles published by its allies expressed a lot of disappointment.
Where were all the delegates?
Even the FCTC Secretariat’s newsroom couldn’t hide the fact that there were deficiencies with the conference. Over 190 delegations would have been expected to arrive for the original staging in November, but the official record only counted “representatives from 142 Parties” as being in attendance.
Anyone who watched the live streams would have noticed a significant number of empty seats and made that assumption anyway. Copwatch estimates that there were up to 700 delegates missing between FCTC boasts in November and the official count post-event.
All the more amusing, then, that the WHO’s sole anti-vaping holdout in the Philippines, Pia Cayetano, has condemned the “huge” delegation sent by her country. One would have thought that sending a large delegation was a sign of support for the event. Copwatch suspects her objection would not have materialised if the delegates were paid-up members of Cayetano’s anti-harm reduction club rather than selected by the Philippines government to defend its admirable policy of embracing reduced risk products.
Interesting country statements
Cayetano was no doubt still seething at the Philippines’ prominent role during country progress statements in the (delayed) opening plenary. The country was one of many which challenged the WHO to consider harm reduction as a valid option to reduce the harms of combustible use. Furthermore, their statement made reference to Article 1(d) of the FCTC treaty which states categorically that harm reduction is one of the pillars of tobacco control, something that the FCTC authorities would rather ignore.
They were not the only delegation to do so. Disappointed pro-WHO groups moaned that “a number of countries, led by Guatemala and including the Philippines, China, Russia, Antigua and Barbuda, echoed industry talking points.” Translation: They didn’t fall into line with the favoured extremist policies suggested by the WHO.
Copwatch could add New Zealand, Guatemala, Armenia and El Salvador to that list, amongst others, and St Kitts and Nevis who played a starring role. More on that further down.
What triumphs?
But firstly, what were the triumphs that Adriana Blanco Marquizo was eager to trumpet?
Article 18 She was most enthused by the consensus achieved over Article 18 on the environment. The decision states that Parties must “have due regard to the protection of the environment and the health of persons in relation to the environment in respect of tobacco cultivation and manufacture within their respective territories.” It is very vague and will be something which is probably already being considered at national level .
Article 19 Likewise, the consensus decision on Article 19 which recommends Parties “strengthen their criminal and civil liability regimes, including administrative measures, to ensure accountability and deterrence, improve access to justice, and allow for effective remedies for those affected by tobacco harms.” Copwatch wonders what enthusiasm there will be for the many Parties with nationalised tobacco industries to take themselves to court.
Article 2.1
Article 2.1 was already a part of the treaty, but was bolstered by being included on the agenda. The decision recommends that Parties “identify and describe forward-looking tobacco control measures and measures that expand or intensify approaches to tobacco control as they apply to tobacco products.” Copwatch has a great idea. How about Parties identify harm reduction and the promotion of reduced risk products as a proven way of reducing the harms of combustible tobacco use? It fits the description perfectly.
Article 13 There was also a decision on Article 13 on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, mostly concerned with tackling posts on digital and social media channels which, again, is being discussed in many countries already.
Articles 9 & 10
One agenda item on which Parties could not reach consensus was on Articles 9 & 10 regarding regulation of contents and disclosure of tobacco products. Debate was ongoing for the entire week, taking up so much time that other items had to be shifted to the workload of Committee B for the duration.
An item in the GATC day 2 bulletin, written by Rob Cunningham of the Canadian Cancer Society and Deborah Arnott of Action on Smoking and Health in the UK, insisted that “Articles 9 and 10 deal with tobacco products, not e-cigarettes or other nicotine products.” Yet the agenda item encouraged delegates to consider report FCTC/COP/10/7 during discussions which, as Copwatch has written before, comments extensively on nicotine pouches and disposable vapes; dishonestly states that there is no evidence vaping can help people quit smoking; that even if they do, it does not constitute smoking cessation; that flavours are only attractive to adolescents; and points delegates to cherry-picked research on reduced risk products in the TobReg9 report.
Surely that is all wasted work if, as claimed, Articles 9 & 10 are not concerned with novel products? Perhaps this is why St Kitts and Nevis not only argued that the WHO needs to define harm reduction, but also introduced a proposal that Article 1(d) should be taken into account in deliberations over articles 9 & 10. And then the fight started.
Despite 5 days of debate, no consensus could be reached and they will go through it all again at COP11 next year.
Who wants to host COP11?
All in all, the decisions which reached consensus were rather limp and the conference in general rather underwhelming. Not particularly deserving of the term “historic”.
Finally, Copwatch would have liked to inform our readers where COP11 will be taking place but, sadly, the host country was not announced in the closing plenary. Evidently, there was no interest from any of the Parties and no applications to host were received.
One wonders what countries don’t find appealing about playing host to a two week opaque talking shop which attracts no tourists or media interest, nor offers infrastructure benefits, but comes with a $5 million price tag.
At nine pages, it is unusually long. Here are our observations:
Articles 9 & 10 (agenda item 6.1) has been postponed to COP11. This is no surprise – we have been reporting all week on how slow the progress on that agenda item has been.
There is a lot still to get through in the first session today, and only 3 hours to do it
An item of particular interest to us, Novel and emerging tobacco products (agenda item 6.3) is not resolved and is carried over to today’s business
Late evening meetings have been needed to force decisions, including on who the next Head of the Secretariat will be (agenda item 8.8) `
Please let us know if you think we have missed anything interesting.
There are still no decisions for this week posted on the Decisions page. So, we will keep watching for when those appear.
Today’s GATC bulletin From today’s GATC bulletin we learn that:
COP is expected to take up two sessions today, finishing in the evening. We had reported yesterday that there were still a lot of agenda items to get through.
Philippines is the latest country to be dignified with a ‘dirty ashtray’ award, for ‘its brazen use of tobacco industry tactics of obstinate dispute and delay throughout the COP’. The Philippines is included in our Interesting country statements article, their statement at the livestreamed debate included:
‘we emphasize the importance of a tailored multi-sectoral approach to FCTC implementation, acknowledging Article 1D of FCTC, varying national context and priorities, and domestic legislation.’ The link to the Philippines statement is here.
GATC indignation The GATC bulletin displays a palpable sense of indignation. Frustrated that the decision on articles 9 & 10 was deferred to COP11, the editorial complained of “just the amount of diversion and distraction that seemed intentionally disruptive at times.”
The author was particularly irritated that the term “harm reduction” was used. The adoring FCTC fan club has deluded itself that harm reduction is a tobacco industry fabrication rather than a real life concept with its own Wikipedia page and is an obligation (much ignored) of the FCTC treaty in article 1d of the preamble.
The editorial also claimed that parties were “confused” about the difference between a working group and an expert group. To clarify for our readers, the former is a group open to all Parties to join, whereas the latter is a group of so-called ‘experts’ cherry-picked by the Convention Secretariat to force through its perverse ideology. See Clive Bates’ Commentary on the annotated agenda (page 5) for more on that.
GATC’s assessment of the week
The bulletin also carries an account of the experience of a first-time COP attendee from the Philippines. Having been suitably brainwashed, she moaned about how delegates had not clamped down hard enough on “electronic smoking devices”.
“Clearly, the tobacco industry is creating a new generation of nicotine addiction with these emerging products”, she claimed, blissfully ignorant of the fact that tobacco companies provide a tiny proportion of the vaping market and that the products have been saving millions of lives worldwide.
Remember, you are paying for this delusion through your taxes.
Will there be any live streaming from COP10 today? This tile has appeared on the COP10 website, so it looks as though a press conference will be streamed:
We had thought that the final session might be streamed, and perhaps it will. However, it is unlikely to be as interesting as the debate we saw on days one and two this week, which featured the statements from some of the Parties.
The announcement of where COP11 will be held will come later. That honour probably won’t be going to a Dirty Ashtray award winner.
From the Journal we learn that ‘Implementation of Articles 9 & 10’ (agenda item 6.1) is still unresolved; Committee A will be dealing with it yet again today. We reported on this several times this week. If you are in Committee A and you are reading this – do look at page 5 of Clive Bates’ Commentary on the annotated agenda for a succinct outline of the issues.
Committee A is also discussing ‘Novel and emerging tobacco products’ (agenda item 6.3) today. Again, if anyone from Committee A is here, do read pages 9-11 of Clive Bates’ Commentary on the annotated agenda for his expert view on that.
Both Committees have had evening sessions added, in order to get through their business. It is good to see that the agenda items are being properly discussed, and the WHO and Secretariat’s proposals are not just being waved through.
According to the Programme of work in today’s Journal, the plan is to clear agenda items up to and including item 8. That would leave what are basically announcements for the plenary / closing session tomorrow. According to the Preliminary Journal, tomorrow’s plenary session will be held either in the morning or in the afternoon:
We just hope that Red Bull is on hand – there is still a lot of business to get through.
The thorny issue of harm reduction at COP10
It is evident that the prohibitionists at COP are getting a hard time over the issue of tobacco harm reduction (THR). Many of the statements made by Parties in the livestreamed debate referenced it, suggesting trouble ahead for those who want harsh restrictions applied to safer nicotine products. The NGO’s are on the back foot. The European Respiratory Society (ERS) felt compelled to put out a statement on THR this week, asserting that ‘it cannot recommend “harm reduction” as a population-based strategy to reduce smoking and aid quitting’. (Sorry, ERS, the ship has already sailed: there are millions of us globally who have left smoking behind, thanks to THR.)
GATC published an article titled ‘Harm reduction is at the heart of the treaty’ in their latest bulletin. Those of us who practise THR would agree that harm reduction is central to the treaty – after all, it is covered in article 1 d of the FCTC:
Image credit: @vapingit
However, that is all we can agree with in GATC’s article, in which they appear to misunderstand what harm reduction is about, let alone THR.
‘the tobacco control community should not reject the idea of harm reduction per se but we should learn from the best practices of proven public health oriented measures while preventing the tobacco industry from hijacking that important term’
Go Guyana! Guyana is in GATC’s bad books today, for ‘repeated grandstanding, time-wasting interventions that ignored legal advice on the content of the FCTC and rules of procedure of the COP’.
Country statements – videos sCOPe has compiled a YouTube playlist with the videos of the statements made by countries in Asia Pacific. Watch (and share!) those from here: CoP 10 Country Statements – Asia Pacific
The Journal includes an overview of what business the COP will address for the day, and a report on the previous day. From the report section, we see that Committee A’s deliberations over agenda item 6.1, concerning Articles 9 & 10, are still not resolved:
Also, that two agenda items have now been transferred from Committee A to Committee B – an indication that the discussions over item 6.1 are taking much longer than anticipated.
We have also noticed that the Decisions section on the COP10 website has no documents from this week- is this because no decisions have been made, or because decisions haven’t yet been published?
Canada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, New Zealand, Philippines, St Kitts and Nevis and the United Kingdom are all featured in there, and we have linked to a separate image file for each statement.
NGOs behaving badly We are so bored of writing about them but they will keep on doing awful stuff.
GATC tweeted its Golden Orchid and Dirty Ashtray awards just before the sessions started – clearly intended to intimidate the Parties as they got down to COP business:
We assume that Singapore has been obediently pushing for the Expert group – see our earlier update for more on that. However, we have no idea what the Dominican Republic’s perceived sins are.
Media coverage on COP10 Media interest in COP is picking up a bit. This article from ULYS media in Kazakhstan describes an incident during one of the live streamed sessions:
“Jamilya Sadykova, a well-known anti-tobacco activist in Kazakhstan, appeared on the monitor and took a place in the delegation hall with representatives of our country. In this peculiar queue to the podium of the conference, she, violating etiquette, tried to attract attention to herself and tried to communicate with the head of the Kazakh delegation from the Ministry of Health.
– This is not the first time. There have already been similar incidents at other COPs when Jamilya took it upon herself to make statements on behalf of the Republic of Kazakhstan, explain members of the delegation.
They are trying to understand what goals Sadykova is pursuing and assume that these are her personal interests associated with private organizations and the American billionaire Michael Bloomberg.”
Delegates behaving badly at COP, who knew?! Do read the full article, it also reports on demonstrations by farmers outside the Convention Centre.
Panama authorities T-shirt crackdown There was a commotion on Tuesday as Panamanian authorities flexed their muscles. Panama Radio reported that “the Public Health team of the Metropolitan Health Region carried out an operation in four hotels in the town after a complaint about the distribution of pamphlets and t-shirts focused on the consumption of tobacco and its derivatives.” This was apparently unacceptable “because it affects the public health of the population.”
Copwatch has discovered the nature of these lethal materials. They are t-shirts worn by vaping consumer advocates and flyers produced by consumer associations to be handed out to delegates at COP explaining salient points of harm reduction and politely asking them to consider consumer concerns. The Panamanian public are no doubt reassured that the full force of the state has been employed to stamp out such dangerous threats to the safety of the country’s citizens.
Copwatch understands that the Good COP event at the Central Panama Hotel in Casco Viejo was visited by representatives of the Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids yesterday. They were greeted by Taxpayers Protection Alliance staff and invited to register for the event. Sadly, they left soon after but we hear their names are recorded at the TPA reception desk and their lanyards are available to pick up at their convenience.
The agenda items included in yesterday’s Journal included several for Committee A, under ‘Item 6 Treaty and technical matters’. This included item 6.1 Implementation of Articles 9 and 10 of the WHO FCTC.
We wrote about this agenda item in our update yesterday, asking: Will Parties relinquish control to the Expert group (Articles 9 & 10)? From the GATC bulletin Day 4 we learn that there has been a struggle in Committee A. GATC is very annoyed 😂
“We appeared to be in some sort of dystopian COP yesterday in Committee A – was anyone else in the same alternate universe we were in? A world where COP Rules of Procedure can be blatantly ignored, the scope of FCTC Articles magically expanded, advice from WHO legal rejected and the entire history of how the COP operates forgotten or thrown out the window?”
The discussions over Articles 9 & 10 did not go according to the Canadian NGO’s plan:
“We would like to take this opportunity to remind Parties of the necessity of adopting the proposed draft decision in relation to Articles 9 and 10”
The discussion has taken up a day and a half!
That draft decision includes Parties surrendering control to an Expert group, on a very weak mandate. In reference to this Clive Bates wrote:
Copwatch is delighted to hear that Committee A is discussing this thoroughly. It is a relief to hear that some Parties in Committee A are conscientiously considering decisions which affect millions of lives – and not being railroaded by the Secretariat, the Bureau and unelected NGOs.
Country statements Of huge interest to COPWATCH’s consumer advocate audience has been the statements given by the countries, during agenda item 5. These have been live streamed over days one and two.
All three videos can still be viewed on the COP10 home page, look for these tiles:
Later we will bring you excerpts from the transcripts, highlighting those statements which mention harm reduction.
If anyone is producing video clips of the individual country statements please let us know – we would love to include those in upcoming Copwatch updates
Organised by the Bloomberg funded NGOs and designed to pressurise the Parties, it is good to see that these official side events are getting a healthy reaction on social media.
Countries gave statements during agenda item 5 at COP10. These were live streamed over days one and two. At the time of writing the videos were accessible via the COP10 homepage. We posted the full transcripts here: 1, 2, 3.
In this article we post the individual statements which we think are interesting, with a brief explanation of why we have included them. Are there any other statements you think we should include? Let us know.
Armenia – asks for harm reduction to be considered: “we believe that alternative methods of reducing the negative health impacts of smoking should be considered on the firm basis of scientific research and conclusions in order to take informed decisions on how to minimize the harm of smoking within that particular segment of our society.” Link to statement, here
Canada – no mention is made of harm reduction, conflicts with the national policy? Link to statement, here
El Salvador – asks for further studies and information to analyse the impact of novel products Link to statement, here
Guatemala – raises a point of order over how consensus is reached at COP Link to statement, here
Guyana – calls for a ‘serious and evidence-based discourse on harm reduction’ Link to statement, here
New Zealand – states that their national approach ‘involves a considered implementation of evidence-based harm reduction measures’ Link to statement, here
Philippines – ‘we emphasize the importance of a tailored multi-sectoral approach toFCTC implementation, acknowledging Article 1D of FCTC, varying national contextand priorities, and domestic legislation.’ Link to statement, here
St Kitts and Nevis – ‘‘the tobacco control community should not reject the idea of harmreduction per se but we should learn from the best practices of proven public healthoriented measures while preventing the tobacco industry from hijacking that important term’, calls for a working group to be established Link to statement, here
United Kingdom – no mention is made of harm reduction, conflicts with the national policy? Link to statement, here
Live streaming of the country statements Yesterday was Day 2 of FCTC COP10 in Panama. Tobacco harm reduction advocates were pleased to see some transparency brought to the proceedings, with the continued live streaming of the country statements at item 5 (videos are on the COP10 website). As with Day 1, there was no indication given of when the live streaming would start, but we were nonetheless pleased when it finally started blaring out of our devices.
Yesterday we published a transcript of Day 1’s live streamed session, you can find that here. We hope today to publish a transcript of Day 2. Highlights were St Kitts and Nevis, Armenia, El Salvador, the Philippines. The United Kingdom’s statement was disappointing, and seemed to go against assurances that minister Andrea Leadsom had made to MPs, just a few weeks ago. We’ll bring you more on those country statements another time.
GATC updates (why not spend some Bloombucks on a better website?) The official propaganda mouthpiece of COP, GATC, is finally chucking out some semi informative articles. It’s just a shame that their newly revamped website is impossible to navigate. Despite Parties having the decision making powers, the tone of the GATC updates is of irritation. GATC – an unaccountable and unelected NGO – sounds annoyed that Parties might not do as they wish them to do. Of course, GATC knows best! And, those pesky Parties will keep trying to mess with the agenda!
DAY 1
Oh, the irony……
We only had a few agenda items to get through today, notably adopting the agenda, and even that proved to be extremely difficult. Day 1 of COP10 started off with Parties proposing to merge agenda items in an attempt to be more efficient. While in reality, the discussion had the opposite effect and consumed valuable time. We all witnessed the frustrating impact of time spent discussing issues with no productive outcomes. Today was very instructive on how the rest of the week should not be conducted.
This smug ASH update is also blatant about the NGO’s mission to influence Parties:
February 6, 2024 – A typical day at the Conference of the Parties begins very early and ends very late, and today was no different.
At 7:00 AM, ASH begins by meeting with our civil society allies to discuss strategy for the day. Starting at 9:00 AM, we attend meetings with country Parties. The official Committee meetings begin mid-morning and run late into the evening. ASH is here to listen, take notes, engage with Parties and civil society partners, and occasionally make interventions to advocate for our priorities.
Will Parties relinquish control to the Expert group (Articles 9 & 10)?
A ‘day 2’ update in the GATC COP bulletin is written by tobacco controllers Deborah Arnott and Rob Cunningham.. The point of the article is to ‘urge’ Parties to give away some of their powers.
“One of the critical decisions Parties will make this week is whether to approve the creation of an Expert Group for Articles 9 and 10…”
Here is what Clive Bates wrote about that proposal:
Having denied Observer status or even entry to the public gallery to thousands of members of the public and grass roots advocates, we see a continued attempt at COP to show that ‘civil society’ supports what the unaccountable NGOs want at COP10.
As with the Participants list, Bloomberg funding is obvious – but we don’t have time to research whether that applies to absolutely all of them. What is clear though is that GATC has played a leading role in assembling them:
It is outrageous that the GATC – an unaccountable NGO – can seek to influence proceedings in this way. We hope that other parties will not take note.
Do read this excellent article from Philstar on the Orchids and Ashtrays: Absurdity at its worst
“It’s simple: if a COP party or member-country sticks to the agenda and closely aligns itself with the WHO FCTC’s proposed policies, they are given an Orchid Award. On the other hand, if a country ventures to speak about tobacco as a positive force economically or attempts to present proven science on less harmful alternatives to smoking, then they are given the odious-sounding Dirty Ashtray Award.”
We have now generated a transcript from the livestream video of the opening session – LINK to ‘COP10 opening session transcription’. Please note that it is unedited and might contain errors. The video itself is still accessible on the COP10 homepage – look for ‘Live streaming’.
Statements made by some of the Parties yesterday – EU, China, New Zealand, the Philippines, the UK (disappointing!) – are especially interesting to read. Those statements appear towards the end, so scroll down.
COP business resumes today with this general debate, starting at 10 a.m. :
However, you could be forgiven for forgetting that – so far COP10 is a Bloomberg fest.
Here’s some of what we observed of COP10 on Day 1, from our position firmly outside the tent.
The five hour delay
The opening session in Panama was to be livestreamed, from 10.00am ET. However, without any official explanation, the livestream didn’t start until 5 ½ hours later.
Why so late? We can only guess that the exclusion from COP of democratically elected congressmen from Brazil, and the involvement of the Brazilian ambassador, had something to do with it. We imagine that Panama would not welcome a diplomatic incident with Brazil.
“The expectation is to return the accreditation by the end of the day. A meeting on the evening of this Monday, 5th, between state deputies Marcus Vinícius de Almeida (PP), Edivilson Brum (MDB), Zé Nunes (PT) and Silvana Covatti (PP) and ambassador Carlos Henrique Moojen de Abreu e Silva seeks to detail the demands and the search for participation in COP10.”
Watch this video from El Mono Vapeador, filmed before security guards ejected him from the Convention Centre. Includes an interview with some of those trying to get admitted to COP.
The delay in the livestreaming even confused people inside, with the director of Expose Tobacco retweeting Copwatch (Expose Tobacco does not like Copwatch!).
The official proceedings
We will bring you more on the opening session in a later update. The video for the livestream is still up, on the COP10 homepage – look for ‘live stream’ towards the bottom. We are watching it now – the statements from national delegations are likely to be the most interesting part of the proceedings.
That’s all for now. We’ll finish with our short message to delegates:
Delegates – you are representing your countries. You are the decision makers at COP. We trust you to look behind the propaganda. We trust you to read the official documents, not just what the official NGOs are saying. We trust you to do the right thing for people who smoke and who need access to safer nicotine products to improve their health.
