All of ASH’s programs are based on the foundational concept that tobacco violates the right to health of all people. We take a human rights-based approach to tobacco control.
Our liability program focuses on utilizing the courts and legal systems to protect the right to health from the harms of the tobacco industry. Our endgame program seeks to phase out the commercial sale of tobacco, therefore ensuring a better right to health for all.
2024 has brought exciting new developments in this area, in both ASH’s achievements and progress in other areas.
ASH published a significant investigative report about tobacco in Switzerland, the “birthplace of human rights,” which concluded that tobacco corporations in Switzerland are causing harm and committing human rights violations, both in Switzerland and abroad. ASH also organized a successful “blast” of reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); four reports from four different countries, submitted in concert with an informal briefing, to draw attention to tobacco within the Committee.
Outside of ASH, we are seeing more and more inclusions of human rights language and processes in tobacco control efforts. For example, Peru recently enacted Law 32159 – Law on the Control of the Consumption of Tobacco, Nicotine or Substitutes for Both for the Protection of Life and Health. The law explicitly recognizes “the principle of progressivity for the protection of the right to health against the use of tobacco and nicotine products.”
In addition, the recent U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on “Eliminating Tobacco-Related Disease and Death: Addressing Disparities,” included a number of human rights principles that ASH centers our work around. The Report addresses social justice, which goes hand in hand with human rights. “Tobacco-related health disparities are a social injustice, in addition to an economic and health burden. Addressing disparities requires reflection on the complex history of the commercialization of tobacco and both past and present-day experiences of racism, discrimination, and targeted marketing by the tobacco industry.”
After years of working in this area, it’s heartening to see it taking hold in the broader community. A human rights-based approach to tobacco control will help us protect the right to health of people around the world and to end the tobacco epidemic for good.
Because December 10th is International Human Rights Day, a celebration that marks the day that the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we want to encourage you all to incorporate compelling human rights arguments into your work tobacco policy work. The Human Rights Day declaration defines the indivisible and interdependent rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being. Tobacco, and the actions of the tobacco industry, violate a number of human rights, most clearly, the right to health.
Let’s keep fighting to protect human rights, together!
