Questions and answers Reporting instrument

Article 21.1 of the Convention requires all Parties to submit to the Conference of the Parties (COP), through the Convention Secretariat, periodic reports on their implementation of the Convention.

At the fourth session of the COP, Parties decided that implementation reports should be submitted at regular, two-year intervals, synchronized with the cycle of the regular sessions of the COP

The next reporting cycle will be announced after the Ninth session of the COP (COP9).

For such a Party, the minimum period between entry into force of the Convention and submission of its first report is one year.

Parties that have not submitted their implementation reports during the reporting period are still able to do so. However, their reports will not be included in the analysis that the Secretariat will submit to the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties.

If a Party has participated in tobacco-related research carried out by WHO departments, the Party is still required to submit an implementation report to the WHO FCTC Secretariat. Conduction of other tobacco-related research by any Party does not diminish the Parties’ obligation to biennially complete and submit their WHO FCTC implementation report about the progress they have made in the implementation of the Convention (as mandated under Article 21 of the Convention).

The optional module was developed to facilitate the voluntary submission of information by the Parties on the use of the implementation guidelines. The questions aim to reflect the content of the guidelines and to supplement the questions in the core questionnaire. Questions that are already included in the core questionnaire are not repeated in the optional module.

To complete the online core questionnaire (including the online additional questions [optional module]) Parties should refer to the link sent by e-mail to the WHO FCTC technical focal point around one month before the opening of the new reporting cycle. For Parties’ information (not completion, just information), the PDF version of the core questionnaire is available here.

Links to the online reporting instrument are sent to the Parties using the email address most recently provided to the Convention Secretariat. If the individual responsible for the completion of the reporting instrument has changed since the last reporting cycle, please contact the WHO FCTC Secretariat at [email protected], and provide the contact details of the new focal point.

Yes. Parties can contact the Convention Secretariat at [email protected] to request the MS Word version of the questionnaires (core questionnaire and additional questions [optional module]) in one of the six official languages of the COP. The Word documents can be used to facilitate the completion of the implementation report. However, the final report should be submitted through the online reporting platform.

The WHO FCTC Implementation Database contains all data reported by Parties and is searchable by Party or by specific treaty articles. The treaty articles are further searchable by individual measures. The database can be accessed here.

Yes. On the online reporting platform, each Party has access to its previous implementation report. The previous responses to the questions of the reporting instrument are available in an editable format. Should the Parties need any of their previous reports in MS Word format they can contact the WHO FCTC Secretariat at [email protected].

The report should be submitted in one of the six official languages of the COP: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish.

Yes. The step-by-step instructions for the completion of the reporting instrument are available on the WHO FCTC web site: here. This document, available in all six official languages of the COP, has proved to be very useful to Parties in responding to questions. The step-by-step instructions are also available in a video version, available through this link.

Yes. In such cases, please send a message containing a brief description of the required assistance to [email protected], and the Secretariat will strive to assist as quickly as possible. In the reporting periods, the Secretariat will deal with such messages on a priority basis.

Parties that have limited access to Internet or if their Internet access is not stable, should notify the WHO FCTC Secretariat of the difficulty they are facing. According to our previous experience, there could be some remedies for this problem. In some cases, the WHO Country Office is able to help the country’s reporting officer by providing a workspace with a good Internet connection for the time necessary for the completion of the report. Alternatively, Parties can complete their implementation reports in MS Word or PDF offline, and then copy and paste all the information into the online reporting platform when they have Internet connection.

The designated government official responsible for submitting the implementation report can sign a cover letter, but this is not mandatory. If a cover letter is being prepared, this should be scanned and emailed to the Convention Secretariat at [email protected]; such letter could be as simple as stating that the report has been submitted through the online questionnaire.

Parties are encouraged to often save the data they have entered into the online reporting platform by clicking on the “Resume later” button at the bottom of each page. To prevent any data loss, this should be done as frequently as necessary; for example, if the completion is stalled for any reason for a longer period of time (e.g. the reporting officer leaves to attend a meeting), it is prudent to hit the “Resume later” button.

All implementation reports and the annexes to those reports are available on the WHO FCTC website, on country pages dedicated to each Party that has submitted at least one implementation report. They can be found here.

A Party that has newly ratified the Convention needs to report in the next regular reporting cycle, synchronized with the regular sessions of the Conference of the Parties, unless this reporting cycle is within one year after entry into force of the Convention for that Party. See decision FCTC/COP4(16), available through this link.