The ASH Team is in Geneva for the Eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP11) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) from November 17 – 22, 2025. We will share updates and progress here for our community to stay engaged and informed throughout COP11.
November 17, 2025 – Greetings from Geneva and the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The COP officially began today, but of course a lot of the work is done before the first gavel falls.
The day began with a civil society event at the famous Broken Chair sculpture outside the Palace of Nations, focusing attention on the life and death consequences of the outcomes of COP11.
The day 1 agenda is largely procedural, including the adoption of the provisional agenda. This time, however, it was actually an important moment. There is one agenda item that threatens to eat up several days of the COP, something the tobacco industry prizes. That item is the role of non-traditional nicotine products in tobacco policy, i.e., harm reduction. The provisional agenda had it last among substantive issues; moving it to first threatened leaving no time for productive conversations. Fortunately, the agenda was adopted without comment.
Most of the rest of the day was absorbed by “general debate,” which in this case means Parties taking the floor to tout their progress in FCTC implementation since the last COP. Several Parties pointed positively (and a few negatively) to the coming discussion of Forward-Looking Measures (FLMs). FLMs are first on the substantive agenda once provisional issues are finished. This is the first FCTC COP since the release of the excellent expert group report. The report includes several true endgame measures, something never before debated at COP. Day 2 could be historic.
