UN health agency issues draft text as global tobacco accord nears completion

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today made public the draft text that will be key to the final round of negotiations on a global treaty aimed at curbing the advertising, promotion, sales and smuggling of tobacco products.

Praising the draft from Geneva today, WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland called the new text “a solid basis for a treaty that, when adopted, will protect public health.”

When in effect, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) – the first international health treaty under the agency’s auspices – will be an important tool in the fight against cancer, heart disease and emphysema and for health promotion efforts globally. “I am confident we can craft a convention which both has muscle and that can be accepted by all,” Dr. Brundtland said.

Echoing that sentiment, the draft’s lead negotiator, Ambassador Luis Felipe de Seixas Corrêa of Brazil, chair of the Inter-governmental Negotiating Body (INB) of the Framework Convention, said the aim of this text is to “ensure that we end up with a treaty which is an effective tool for improving public health.”

The chair’s revised text will be the basis for the sixth and final session of the INB, which will take place in Geneva from 17 to 28 February. Over those 11 days, delegations from WHO’s 192 Member States will negotiate a final text that will be submitted for adoption in May by the World Health Assembly, the organization’s governing body. Once the Assembly has adopted the convention, further discussions will be opened to add more detailed protocols on specific issues.

“We have made excellent progress thus far and I am confident we will be able to move the process ahead to prepare the convention for adoption by the next Assembly,” said Ambassador de Seixas Corrêa. During the fifth round of negotiations last October, substantial progress was made towards agreement on such key issues as tobacco advertising, illicit trade in tobacco products, taxes, and international co-operation.