Recently, with the 20th anniversary of the WHO tobacco treaty (the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, FCTC), the tobacco control community has highlighted the FCTC’s contribution to other subject areas; many of which are taking the lessons learned and best practices and applying them to their fields. However, for International Women’s Day, and every day, we want to recognize the impact that the women’s rights movement had on the FCTC and on coveted best practices in tobacco control.
Tobacco control owes a lot of our success to the women’s rights movement. There are several references to human rights documents in the Preamble of the FCTC, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). These references have been key to much of our human rights work at ASH.
In her blog recognizing the FCTC anniversary, Soon-Young Yoon (representative for the International Alliance of Women to the UN) remembered how these references were in response to the women’s caucus which worked to, “build consensus between government officials, feminist leaders and experts, drafting text and lobbying for women’s rights.”
During ASH’s webinar on the FCTC: How We Got Here and Where We are Going, both Dr. Judith Mackay (Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control and Senior Policy Advisor to World Health Organization) and Paula Johns (co-founder and director of the ACT Tobacco Control Alliance, a Brazilian coalition of over a thousand members) discussed their initial involvement in the FCTC treaty process stemming from their existing involvement in the women’s rights movement. That connection is true for many crucial advocates who supported the FCTC treaty development and continue to support its robust implementation.
The tobacco control community has built on their progress and continues to utilize women’s rights arguments to work towards the end of the tobacco epidemic. ASH 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.
Moving forward, working collaboratively between the public health movement and the women’s rights movement will continue to be important. Many of the continuing harms from tobacco most directly impact women, including second hand smoke and development.
On this International Women’s Day, we want to acknowledge the important influence that the women’s rights movement has had and will continue to have on tobacco control.
Thank you all!
