Report from the WHO FCTC Seventh Session of the Conference of Parties

The 7th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), held in India in November 2016, revealed much about the state of global tobacco control. Unlike earlier COPs that focused largely on developing guidelines for key provisions such as smoke-free policies (Article 8) or tobacco taxation (Article 6), this meeting focused more on treaty implementation and conceptualising how to fund these efforts. It was a slow, challenging week as the Parties struggled to find common ground. While progress was not totally obvious, there were some highlights. To begin, tobacco industry interference was an integral part of most core discussions, emphasising that the Parties are aware of its strong influence. Underscoring the issue’s importance to sceptics, some Parties – Guatemala, Macedonia, and Moldova, to name a few – revealed positions that hewed suspiciously closely to the tobacco industry’s. The COP also indicated a willingness to engage the FCTC with other major international agreements and universal concepts.
The Parties also confirmed their commitment toward the target of reducing tobacco use prevalence by 30% by 2025, as outlined in the WHO Global Action Plan (adopted by the Parties at COP6), and expressed their desire to identify more concretely the steps that are needed to achieve this target. The Conference of Parties committed to collect information on national tobacco use reduction targets and report on the progress toward these goals. Additionally, the Parties recognised that the FCTC contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals is not limited to health and touches issues such as gender equality, human rights, and economic growth – all of which were discussed in Delhi.
Where do we go from here to best reach our shared goal of ending the tragic burden of tobacco-related avoidable disease and premature death? First, for future COPs, delegations must prepare better. This preparation must include developing and circulating proposed decisions before the COP, permitting better use of COP time to address the many complexities. Second, high-income countries (HICs) need to remind themselves that many of the issues closest to them are not necessarily the same ones for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). For example, although the COP’s decision on Articles 17 and 18 improved upon the COP6 statement, tobacco- growing countries – mostly LMICs – want and need more, particularly to think more...


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