<Home> <Health News> <Smoking> <Proceedings of INGCAT's Int'l NGO MObilisation Meeting in Geneva> <Motivation NGO Members and Building Coalition>

Proceedings INGCAT International NGO MObilisation Meeting Geneva, 15-16 May, 1999.

Motivation NGO Members And Building Coalitions
Emma Must
ASH (London)

We have a problem
According to the World Health Organisation, if present trends continue unchecked, whilst death in the developed world due' to smoking related diseases will increase from 2 million per year at present to 3 million per year 2030, deaths in developing countries will increase from 1 million per year at present to 7 million per year.

And amongst the causes of this problem are the aggressive marketing tactics now being used by the tobacco multinationals in developing countries, as they turn their attention to the Third World in search of new markets.

In Sri Lanka, for example, British American Tobacco sponsors a "Golden Tones Disco", employing young women in shimmering golden saris to offer each person entering the disco a free Benson and Hedges cigarette and a light, saying "G ahead 1 want to see you smoke it now". We need solutions, and we need them urgently. Luckily we have two factors in our favor:

1. There are a lot of us;
2. There has never been a better time to push for solutions with WHO taking the initiative and going full speed ahead in developing its Frame work Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

So I'd like to talk a little about the FCTC; why NG0s will be crucial to its success., and how we might act to make it successful everyone from the World Alliance of YMCAs to the International Council on Alcohol and Addictions. I'll draw in particular on an example of a campaign 1 was involved with in the UK whilst working with the World Development Movement last year before joining ASH in London to work on international tobacco issues, which is where I'm now based.

The frame work Convention
The FCTC is a piece of international law, like various environmental conventions, for example, the Climate Charge, Convention or the Vienna Convention for the Protection or the Ozone Layer, Signatory governments would agree to pursue broad goals in areas such as:

o Tobacco advertising and marketing
o Smuggling
o Product regulation

Attached to the Framework Convention, either negotiated alongside or afterwards, could be a number of protocols more detailed legal instruments to flesh out specific policy aims in these and other areas.

The first milestone in the life of the Convention was May 1996 when the World Health Assembly called on the Director General of the WHO to initiate its development. It was picked up again by Dr. Brundfland last summer when she took over at the WHO. The next crucial milestone is coming up next week during the World Health Assembly, when governments have the chance to pass a resolution to give the green light to the political phase of the Convention (This has since occurred).

The role of NGOs
All the evidence gained form other conventions shows that they will only be strong and meaningful if NG0s support the process. NGOs acting in alliance can play a crucial role in rendering the dense and opaque politics of international conventions accessible to smaller local organisations; applying lobbying and media pressure on governments back home, then forcing a beauty contest between them at convention meetings where they try to outshine each other; and sharing information about the tobacco industry to undercut their arguments.

Lucinda Wykle-Rosenberg, form INFACT, presented some detailed example of such NGO activity coalitions which pushed forward, for example, the Code of Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes, the Climate Change Convention and the Landmines treaty. In all of those treaties, the general rule of thumb is: the greater the role of NG0s in negotiating international treaties (or codes) the stronger the final outcome.

What I want to concentrate on is how we might act in the various and diverse areas in which we work to make the FCTC an extremely strong piece of international law that might go some considerable way towards averting those catastrophic death projections.

Firstly Those of you concerned with youth issues: such as the YMCAs the Girl Guides and the Girl Scouts: You might want to concentrate on using the Convention to stamp out the marketing of tobacco products to young people.

· In Cambodia, for example, the multinational Japan Tobacco covers ice cream wagons with cigarette adverts-specifically to attract children;

Such tactics aimed at children are reflected in the increase in the numbers of children smoking in many developing countries.

· In Malaysia the number of Malaysian girls under twelve who smoke has trebled in the last ten year.

On perhaps you might want to look at the issue of smuggling. Smuggling of tobacco products is a growing problem in fact it increased 73% world-wide between 1990 and 1995. Each year 300 billion cigarette that is a third of all cigarettes entering international commerce are smuggled, escaping taxes and import restrictions. One effect is to make top international brands affordable to low income consumer, especially image conscious young people in developing countries who regard western products as sophisticated and stylish. Young people can buy these products because smuggling makes them cheap. So you might want to try use the FCTC to reduce the problem of smuggling by:

1. Increasing penalties for smugglers;
2. Requiring tax paid stamps on all tobacco products to distinguish between legal and illegal goods making contraband products easier to detect and the laws easier to enforce.

The there are those of you concerned with tobacco as a drug perhaps the JCAA, the International Federation of NG0s for the Prevention of Drug and Substance Abuse and Action for International Medicine. You will be aware that cigarettes are not regulated like other drugs and that nicotine from harmful cigarettes is freely amiable whilst therapeutic nicotine (in the form of patches) is only available on prescription. Cigarettes are not just tubes of paper filled with tobacco, but highly sophisticated nicotine delivery devices.

You may decide to get your members to lobby their government to regulate cigarettes like other drugs bringing them under the same rules which govern the sale and promotion of other nicotine delivery devices.

And then there are those of you concerned with poverty, such as the World Council of Churches. As Mary Assunta said about tobacco and poverty, the figures speak for themselves.

· A recent survey from Bangladesh demonstrated that people on low incomes who smoke 5 cigarettes a day have to cut food purchases by 15 percent which reduces their daily calorific intake by a corresponding 15 percent. · And in Sri Lanka, in families where there is a smoker, 20-30% of total family income will typically be spent on cigarettes.

These are just the sorts of arguments that should be heard within the Framework Convention negotiations. There are of course many other aspects of the tobacco issue which the Framework Convention could address and which you might want to pick up and run with - women, and sports sponsorship to name but two.

The WDM campaign
I'd like to talk briefly now about one specific campaign by an organistion concerned primarily with corporate accountability issues the World Development Movement (WDM) in London, with whom 1 worked before joining ASH in April of this year.

WDM was running a campaign called people before Profits concerned with maximizing the befits and minimizing the costs of multinational companies.

WDM saw the FCTC as an excellent model for how to regulate one particular multinational industry the tobacco industry. This model could then potentially be applied to other industries. Last September they launched "Marketing Death"- a campaign for global standards in tobacco marketing, with the specific aim of getting the British Government to demonstrate firm commitment to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in its policy paper last December.

The campaign was launched with a stunt in Trafalgar Square: "Ad's Army" a crack squad of slick advertising executives (i.e., a bunch of drama students dressed up!) practiced firing giant cigarettes at a map of the Third World before "marching off to conquer new markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America". The campaign included distributing thousands of leaflets containing a postcard to be sent back to Prime Minister Tony Blair. More than three thousand postcards were eventually retained to him we know this because we received a forlorn phone call from a harassed civil servant saying that the pile of postcards had now been passed on to her and "do we have to reply to them all?'

Two developing country tobacco campaigners Mary Assunta from Malaysia and Sajeeva Ranweera form Sri Lanka - were then invited to tour Britain, taking part in media and public speaking events to highlight the ways in which tobacco multinationals are targeting their countries with aggressive marketing tactics now being outlawed in the European Union.

WDM also staged a high profile joint press conference with ASH and the British Medical Association as well as laying down an Early Day Motion in Parliament for MPs to register their support.

The result of all this campaigning activity was that the policy paper issued last December contained a substantial section on the framework Convention and a commitment by the Government W' do everything we can to help" in pushing it forward. Not bad considering that, according to one civil servant, the issue was "not even on the radar" three months earlier.

Conclusions
It's clear that NGOs can make a difference to the development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control we are a vital part of the solution.

· First, get your information from these wonderful glossy booklets produced by TFI: and by subscribing to Globalink-where there is now an international e-mail conference with frequent postings about the FCTC process, milestones coming up, and action you can take.

· And find your niche: which aspects of the FCTC are most important to your organisation? Act to make your policy demands a reality through the Convention? Whether you are a youth organisation concerned with stamping out youth marketing and smuggling, or an organisation concerned with regulating tobacco like other drugs. Or an organisation primarily concerned with poverty or corporate responsibility.

At this point I'll describe a small T-shirt given to me last year by Debra Efroymson, a campaigner then working in Vietnam. It is of the size to fit a small child perhaps a three or four year old. It's bright red, complete with the Rothmans "Dunhill" logo emblazoned across it and an ad for the World Cup in 2002.

This T-shirt is just one reason why we need to act. The International Framework Convention on Tobacco Control could include a global ban on tobacco marketing, making his T-shirt a thing of the past and helping to prevent 10 million smoking related deaths world-wide by 2030 from ever becoming a reality.