Honourable ministers, Her Royal Highness, Excellences and participants
I am honoured to join with the many distinguished speakers today in support of the work of Tobacco Free Portfolios and would like to acknowledge and congratulate for the tremendous advancements that Dr King and her colleagues are making.
The Convention Secretariat supports the implementation of the WHO FCTC and works hand in hand with its 181 Parties and with observers from inter and non governmental organizations towards this end.
We are looking forward to the 8th session of the Conference of the Parties, the Governing body of the treaty, who will meet next week in Geneva, Switzerland, to lead and guide global tobacco control efforts.
We will launch at this occasion the Global Progress Report on the Implementation of the Convention. The report will show the many success stories that would eventually lead to reductions in tobacco consumption and tobacco related mortality. It clearly defines the interventions that have strong impact both on the tobacco market and on health, making tobacco products less attractive than ever.
Investing in tobacco is very questionable as it’s all about investing on a product that leads to health, economic, environment and social burden and that ultimately kills consumers.
The guidelines for implementation of Article 5.3 of the treaty call upon government institutions to refrain from any financial interests in the tobacco industry. It also stipulates that government officials should be required to declare and divest themselves of direct interests in the tobacco industry. These provisions of the guidelines should be understood as requiring government-related financial organizations to be tobacco free – and this includes public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
Such measures are not specific just to the Parties to the WHO FCTC. The United Nations Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC, has endorsed the “Model Policy for agencies of the United Nations system on preventing tobacco industry interference”. It calls for separation between the UN system and the tobacco industry and includes refraining from investing or to divest – if they have already invested in – from stocks of the tobacco industry or any organization that works to further their interests.
Tobacco control demands a collective and collaborative approach, and only this will make it effective. We are proudly engaging in the implementation of the first Protocol under the Convention, the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products which has just entered into force.
We have been following the exciting work of the Tobacco free portfolios and we share the aspirational vision it represents.
The launch of the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge with the global finance community plays an important part in our collective approach to curb the tobacco epidemic and we are happy to support it.
Thank you.