AfricaNews - Nigeria, others keep tobacco industry from making health policy decisions

By Adeyinka Olugbade

Nigeria is leading representatives of 160 ratifying countries currently meeting in Durban, South Africa to negotiate guidelines for a provision in the global tobacco treaty that will determine whether millions of people get the health protections guaranteed them under the treaty.
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The negotiations center on the implementation of Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which protects the treaty and related public health policies from tobacco industry interference.

“Industry interference is the number one obstacle to the implementation and enforcement of the global tobacco treaty,” said Kathy Mulvey, international policy director of Corporate Accountability International. “Article 5.3 is the lynchpin of the treaty, determining whether or not countries will be able to reverse this preventable epidemic without the tobacco industry standing in their way.”

The global tobacco treaty, formally called FCTC took effect in 2005 and now protects more than 85 percent of the world’s population. But efforts to implement the treaty are being systematically stymied by tobacco trans-nationals, reinforcing the importance of this week’s third Conference of the Parties (COP3) in Durban, South Africa.

“If we don’t lay out clear terms now about the tobacco industry’s fundamental conflict of interest when it comes to health policy making, it may cost us everything we have achieved through this treaty in turn,” said Akinbode Oluwafemi of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth–Nigeria, a member of the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Trans-nationals (NATT). “We are dealing with an industry bent on protecting its profit interest at all human expense – an industry that has written the book on policy manipulation and interference.”

Countries with similar cases of tobacco industry interference include Zambia, where it is forging a cozy relationship with key government officials responsible for enforcing a new ban on smoking in public places and Kenya, where it is also courting the government in an attempt to roll back protections against exposure to tobacco smoke.

For background on tobacco industry interference in the global tobacco treaty download the 3rd edition of the Global Tobacco Treaty Action Guide, available in English, French and Spanish, visit: www.StopCorporateAbuse.org.

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