The ASH Group is in Geneva for the Eleventh Convention of the Events (COP11) of the WHO Framework Conference on Tobacco Management (FCTC) from November 17 – 22, 2025. We are going to share updates and progress right here for our group to remain engaged and knowledgeable all through COP11.
November 19, 2025 – The third day of COP11 had blended outcomes. Agenda objects included making UN campuses nicotine and aerosol free, Article 18 on the Surroundings, and Article 19 on Legal responsibility in addition to Article 2.1 Ahead-Trying Measures (FLMs) – all ASH priorities.
Article 19 on Legal responsibility was a brand new concern for the agenda – however the dialogue was eerily just like yesterday’s committee debate on FLMs.
ASH has taken a number one position in selling using litigation – together with prison litigation – towards the tobacco business as a device to advance public well being and guarantee accountability for tobacco business’s historic and ongoing misconduct. COP is contemplating an knowledgeable report that presents a variety of coverage choices for international locations to think about referring to civil legal responsibility, prison legal responsibility, and administrative legal responsibility. This dialogue is essential, as a result of legal responsibility, within the FCTC’s phrases, is “an essential a part of tobacco management,” and but Article 19 is among the least-known and least-implemented provisions of the FCTC.
So why the déja vu? As with FLMs, the COP is debating a choice that may invite them to think about which, if any, of the report’s suggestions may be acceptable for them to undertake. Like FLMs, a legal responsibility choice wouldn’t amend the treaty so no nation can be mandated to do something. And as with the dialogue of FLMs, quite a few international locations appear to have misinterpreted these parts.
Happily, as with FLMs, many events expressed their assist.
Equally, Article 21 of the treaty already outlines reporting necessities and subsequently adopting the choice wouldn’t impose new obligations.
The Article 18 agenda merchandise noticed debate as effectively. Whereas cooperation is inspired between the FCTC and different UN mechanisms to deal with the environmental impacts of tobacco, the FCTC COP stays the important thing place to deal with tobacco. As Arnold Kreilhuber, Director of the Europe Workplace of the UN Surroundings Programme reminded Events in his opening plenary speech, a wholesome planet and wholesome persons are two sides of the identical coin.
As predicted in yesterday’s weblog, debates went on effectively into the evening.
