Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone joining us from around the globe.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to this webinar on monitoring tobacco industry interference, organized by the WHO FCTC Knowledge Hubs on Surveillance and on Article 5.3, as well as the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath.
We must begin by acknowledging and sincerely thanking the many partners who are leading this work globally.
These include — in addition to the organizers of today’s webinar — the tobacco industry observatories in Brazil, South Africa, Sri Lanka and several other countries, as well as those monitoring projects based at universities and research institutions.
Your invaluable commitment and leadership are making a real difference.
As you know, Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control calls upon Parties to protect tobacco control policies from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.
And the guidelines for implementation of Article 5.3 clearly state that monitoring implementation of the article must include monitoring the tobacco industry itself.
Of course, civil society organizations that are independent of the tobacco industry play a vital role in this effort.
But Parties to the Convention also are encouraged to monitor the industry as part of their overall implementation of Article 5.3 and its guidelines.
There are many approaches to this work.
The Convention Secretariat — in collaboration with the Knowledge Hub on Article 5.3 — has developed a practical guide for Parties conducting tobacco industry monitoring and also maintains a resource database for industry monitoring.
In addition, the Convention Secretariat continues to collaborate with partners in monitoring the industry.
One such partner, the University of Bath, which is a co-organizer of today’s webinar, conducts research that helps us better understand the industry’s operations.
Another important partner is the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control — one of this year’s World No Tobacco Day awardees — that leads the work on the tobacco industry interference index.
Unfortunately, we are now facing a new and growing challenge — interference by the tobacco industry in the governing body meetings of the Convention itself.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the industry aims to influence the composition and policy positions of country delegations at the biennial sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC and to the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.
The industry even tries to interfere with the meetings themselves.
As this is a serious concern that demands urgent attention, I am pleased to see that some of you already are studying the issue.
As we begin today’s discussion, I call on all of you — researchers, advocates and policy-makers — to intensify your efforts to monitor the industry, especially in this emerging area of interference with the Convention’s governing processes.
I wish you all a productive and insightful webinar.