309The tobacco industry works to defeat, dilute, and delay effective tobacco control measures. Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)1 is therefore the backbone of the FCTC, as the treaty cannot be implemented effectively if industry interference is not rooted out. Its effective implementation is vital in protecting public health and achieving the goals of tobacco control.
In order to provide more clarity and substance and to facilitate implementation, the Parties to the FCTC unanimously adopted the Article 5.3 Guidelines at the 3rd Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP3) to encourage governments to establish, among other safeguards, measures to limit tobacco industry interactions with governments and to put in place public disclosure procedures. Despite their unanimous adoption in 2008, there still remains much room for improved implementation of the Guidelines in the ASEAN region.
The Article 5.3 Guidelines make eight main recommendations with 34 sub-recommendations to governments to ensure that the industry is prevented from exerting its influence on public health policy. From these, 20 recommendations were selected as indicators to assess implementation in seven ASEAN countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. This index is a first attempt at scoring and ranking the countries in their implementation of Article 5.3. The 20 indicators are grouped under 7 simplified categories described below and cover the period after the adoption of the Article 5.3 Guidelines between 2009 and 2013). This tobacco industry interference index is a civil society report prepared collaboratively with tobacco control groups from their respective countries. The index for Brunei Darussalam was completed by the government.
The scores serve as an indicator of the level of tobacco industry interference (TII) based primarily on evidence available publicly as well as stakeholders’ perception. Table 1 provides the complete survey score. The seven countries are ranked (Figure 1) from the lowest level of interference to the highest: Brunei (29), Thailand (51), Lao PDR (61), Cambodia (68), Philippines (71), Malaysia (72), and Indonesia(78).
Main Findings:
-Countries that face high levels of unnecessary interaction with the tobacco industry also face high levels of tobacco
industry participation in policy development;
-Most governments do not allow any tobacco industry representatives on their delegation to sessions of the Conference
of the Parties or its subsidiary bodies nor accept their sponsorship for delegates;
-Most governments still accept or endorse offers of assistance from the tobacco industry in implementing tobacco control
policies;
-Most governments receive tobacco industry contributions (monetary or in kind) or endorse industry CSR activities;
-Governments do not have a procedure for disclosing interactions with the tobacco industry;
-Governments do not prohibit contributions from the tobacco industry to political parties nor require full disclosure of
any contributions;
-Countries still have a long way to go in implementing FCTC Article 5.3 Guidelines.
http://www.seatca.org/dmdocuments/SEATCA-TII%20Index%20Report.pdf