The manufacture, use, and marketing of tobacco present a serious threat to children’s right to health. This makes the Convention on the Rights of the Child a potentially powerful tobacco-control tool and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which oversees the convention’s implementation, a potential leader in tobacco control. UNICEF actively supported tobacco control initiatives in the late 1990s, but since the early 2000s UNICEF’s role in tobacco control has been minimal. Using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents library, an online collection of previously secret tobacco industry documents, we sought to uncover information on the tobacco industry’s ties with UNICEF. We found that from 1997 to 2000, when UNICEF was actively promoting tobacco control to support children’s rights, the tobacco industry saw children’s rights and UNICEF as potentially powerful threats to business that needed to be closely monitored and neutralized. The industry then positioned itself as a partner with UNICEF on youth smoking prevention initiatives as a way to avoid meaningful tobacco control measures that could save children’s lives. After UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines were loosened in 2003, tobacco companies successfully engaged with UNICEF directly and via front groups, including the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation. This was part of an overall tobacco industry strategy to improve its corporate image, infiltrate the United Nations, and weaken global tobacco-control efforts. As part of its mission to protect children’s rights, UNICEF should end all partnerships with the tobacco industry and its front groups.
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Special Article|
May 01 2018
The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights
Yvette van der Eijk, PhD;
Yvette van der Eijk, PhD
aCenter for Tobacco Control Research and Education,
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Stella A. Bialous, DrPH;
Stella A. Bialous, DrPH
aCenter for Tobacco Control Research and Education,
bDepartment of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing, and
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Stanton Glantz, PhD
aCenter for Tobacco Control Research and Education,
cDepartment of Medicine (Cardiology), Cardiovascular Research Institute and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California
Address correspondence to Stanton Glantz, PhD, 530 Parnassus Suite 366, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390. E-mail: stanton.glantz@ucsf.edu
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Address correspondence to Stanton Glantz, PhD, 530 Parnassus Suite 366, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390. E-mail: stanton.glantz@ucsf.edu
POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have indicated they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.
FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE: The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.
Pediatrics (2018) 141 (5): e20174106.
Article history
Accepted:
February 26 2018
Citation
Yvette van der Eijk, Stella A. Bialous, Stanton Glantz; The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights. Pediatrics May 2018; 141 (5): e20174106. 10.1542/peds.2017-4106
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Comments
UNICEF Work with the Tobacco Industry
Our paper(1) recognized that UNICEF does important work to support children’s rights and that it played an important role in tobacco control when the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was being negotiated.
At the same time, the paper shows that UNICEF is not immune to tobacco industry targeting. Tobacco companies carefully orchestrate their attempts to infiltrate organizations, often in a covert manner through third parties and front groups to minimize awareness within the organization that they are being targeted by tobacco companies. They also use the good reputation of UN agencies to bluewash(2) their image, often without the consent of these organizations.
Peterson(3) states that UNICEF was not involved in or aware of the 2003 Ending Child Labor in Tobacco (ECLT) project even though ECLT claims that UNICEF had an advisory function to this project.(4) ECLT again claimed UNICEF was part of a working group in a 2005-2009 project in Kyrgyzstan. At the very least, this situation shows that ECLT was using UNICEF’s good reputation to promote its ECLT’s work, and thereby the interests of the tobacco companies that created ECLT. This is, at a minimum, an example of ‘bluewashing’.
According to Peterson, we make unfounded claims that UNICEF received funding from PMI and JTI. However, according to UNICEF Kazakhstan’s 2010 annual report(5) (cited in our paper), UNICEF engaged with Philip Morris which resulted in a proposal for a $2 million investment. We point this out as an example of tobacco industry engagement with UNICEF. Further, we do not state that UNICEF received funding from JTI; we report that a JTI employee is listed as a contributor on the recent UNICEF publication Obligations and Actions on Children’s Rights and Business: A Practical Guide for States on How to Implement the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No.16(6) as another example of tobacco industry engagement with UNICEF.
Previous work has documented how tobacco companies infiltrated and partnered with UN organizations such as WHO, ILO, FAO and UNGC to undermine the UN’s tobacco control initiatives.(7,8) We, similarly, show how tobacco companies attempted to neutralize UNICEF’s tobacco control work by positioning itself as a partner.
We hope that our paper will raise awareness at UNICEF, and among children’s rights advocates more generally, to formalize a policy of not having any kind of direct or indirect involvement with tobacco industry and to stress the important role UNICEF has in protecting children from tobacco.
REFERENCES
1. van der Eijk Y, Bialous SA, Glantz S. The Tobacco Industry and Children's Rights. Pediatrics 2018;141(5):e20174106; doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-4106
2. Bruno K, Karliner J. Tangled up in Blue: Corporate Partnerships at the United Nations. Corpwatch. https://corpwatch.org/article/tangled-blue. Updated September 1, 2000. Accessed May 17, 2018
3. Peterson, SS. UNICEF rebuttal to claims made in The Tobacco Industry and Children's Rights article [comment], Pediatrics (May 10, 2018).
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/141/5/e20174106.comments#u.... Accessed May 17, 2018.
4. ECLT Foundation. ECLT foundation program in the Philippines with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 2003 - 2005. Available at: www.eclt.org/filestore/DOLEProgramme.pdf. Accessed May 30, 2017
5. UNICEF Kazakhstan. UNICEF Annual Report for Kazakhstan. 2010. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/Kazakhstan_COAR_2010.pdf. Accessed March 26, 2018
6. UNICEF; ICJ. Obligations and Actions on Children’s Rights and Business: A Practical Guide for States on How to Implement the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 16. Geneva, Switzerland: UNICEF, ICJ; 2015. https://www.unicef.org/csr/files/CSR_GC_OBLIGATIONS_AND_ACTIONS_FINAL_AU...
7. WHO FCTC Secretariat. ILO to prepare a report and decide about its relationship with the tobacco industry in November. WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. http://www.who.int/fctc/mediacentre/news/2017/ilo-decide-about-relations.... Updated November 9, 2017. Accessed May 17, 2018
8. van der Eijk Y, McDaniel PA, Glantz SA, et al. United Nations Global Compact: An 'Inroad' into the Un and Reputation Boost for the Tobacco Industry. Tob Control. 2017 Nov 2. pii: tobaccocontrol-2017-054055; doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-054055
RE: UNICEF's comment on our paper
Our paper recognized that UNICEF does important work to support children’s rights and that it played an important role in tobacco control when the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was being negotiated.
At the same time, the paper shows that UNICEF is not immune to tobacco industry targeting. Tobacco companies carefully orchestrate their attempts to infiltrate organizations, often in a covert manner through third parties and front groups to minimize awareness within the organization that they are being targeted by tobacco companies. They also use the good reputation of UN agencies to ‘bluewash’ their image, often without the consent of these organizations.
Peterson states that UNICEF was not involved in or aware of the 2003 Ending Child Labor in Tobacco (ECLT) project even though ECLT claims that UNICEF had an advisory function to this project (ECLT Foundation. ECLT foundation program in the Philippines with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 2003 - 2005. Available at: www. eclt.org/filestore/DOLEProgramme.pdf. Accessed May 30, 2017). ECLT again claimed UNICEF was part of a working group in a 2005-2009 project in Kyrgyzstan. At the very least, this situation shows that ECLT was using UNICEF’s good reputation to promote its ECLT’s work, and thereby the interests of the tobacco companies that created ECLT. This is, at a minimum, an example of ‘bluewashing’.
According to Peterson, we make unfounded claims that UNICEF received funding from PMI and JTI. However, according to UNICEF Kazakhstan’s 2010 annual report (cited in our paper), UNICEF engaged with Philip Morris which resulted in a proposal for a $2 million investment. We point this out as an example of tobacco industry engagement with UNICEF. Further, we do not state that UNICEF received funding from JTI; we report that a JTI employee is listed as a contributor on the recent UNICEF publication Obligations and Actions on Children’s Rights and Business: A Practical Guide for States on How to Implement the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No.16 (Geneva, Switzerland: UNICEF, ICJ; 2015) as another example of tobacco industry engagement with UNICEF.
Previous work has documented how tobacco companies infiltrated and partnered with UN organizations such as WHO, ILO, FAO and UNGC to undermine the UN’s tobacco control initiatives. We, similarly, show how tobacco companies attempted to neutralize UNICEF’s tobacco control work by positioning itself as a partner.
We hope that our paper will raise awareness at UNICEF, and among children’s rights advocates more generally, to formalize a policy of not having any kind of direct or indirect involvement with tobacco industry and to stress the important role UNICEF has in protecting children from tobacco.
UNICEF rebuttal to claims made in The Tobacco Industry and Children's Rights article
To the Editor
The article The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights[1], authored by van der Eijk, et al. and published in Pediatrics on 26 February, contains serious inaccuracies and misrepresentations of both UNICEF’s past engagement with the tobacco industry and UNICEF’s current advocacy for tobacco control. We were surprised and disappointed that UNICEF was not given any opportunity to respond to the allegations set out in the article before it was published -- which would have been standard practice. This letter therefore identifies and rebuts the most serious of these inaccuracies.
UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines, which were developed in 2001, codified a pre-existing, organization-wide policy of not accepting funding or entering into partnership with tobacco manufacturers. This position was not revised or loosened in any way in 2003, and revisions to the guidelines in 2011 and 2016 did not soften UNICEF’s longstanding no-funding, no-partnership policy with the tobacco industry.
The authors reference a project document by the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT) published in 2003[2] as evidence of UNICEF’s engagement with ECLT. This document, developed without the involvement or knowledge of UNICEF, references UNICEF in a single sentence, “ILO/IPEC and UNICEF will be performing advisory functions.” UNICEF was not, in fact, involved in this project, in an advisory or any other capacity. UNICEF’s interactions with ECLT have focused on sharing information and increasing awareness about child rights issues related to the industry’s supply chain. This engagement is entirely in line with UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines and longstanding programmatic and advocacy work, under which the organization does not refrain from sharing information, promoting tools or making technical recommendations that may be important to identify, prevent, address and remediate child rights violations resulting from specific business practices.
The authors’ allegations that UNICEF received funding from tobacco manufacturers are also unfounded. UNICEF did not receive any funding from Philip Morris or Japan Tobacco International.
UNICEF is actively engaged with our Government partners around the world in efforts to reduce tobacco-related harm to children. These efforts, in countries including, for example, Bhutan, Brazil, Burundi, China, Mongolia, Namibia, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and Zambia, are primarily focused on substance abuse prevention and education programming. UNICEF has also been an active member of the United Nations’ Interagency Task Force on Non-Communicable Diseases which works on tobacco control at the global level, since the Task Force was created in 2013.
Since UNICEF, unfortunately, was offered no opportunity to comment on the article before it was published, and thus had no opportunity to correct these inaccuracies in advance, I must ask that you publish this letter in its entirety.
Sincerely,
Stefan Swartling Peterson
Chief of Health Section, Associate Director, Programme Division
UNICEF
[1] van der Eijk Y, Bialous SA, Glantz S. The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights, Pediatrics. 2018; 141(5):e20174106
[2] ECLT Foundation, ECLT Foundation Program in the Philippines with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 2003 – 2005, ECLT. 2003
UNICEF rebuttal to claims made in The Tobacco Industry and Children's Rights article
To the Editor
The article The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights[1], authored by van der Eijk, et al. and published in Pediatrics on 26 February, contains serious inaccuracies and misrepresentations of both UNICEF’s past engagement with the tobacco industry and UNICEF’s current advocacy for tobacco control. We were surprised and disappointed that UNICEF was not given any opportunity to respond to the allegations set out in the article before it was published -- which would have been standard practice. This letter therefore identifies and rebuts the most serious of these inaccuracies.
UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines, which were developed in 2001, codified a pre-existing, organization-wide policy of not accepting funding or entering into partnership with tobacco manufacturers. This position was not revised or loosened in any way in 2003, and revisions to the guidelines in 2011 and 2016 did not soften UNICEF’s longstanding no-funding, no-partnership policy with the tobacco industry.
The authors reference a project document by the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation (ECLT) published in 2003[2] as evidence of UNICEF’s engagement with ECLT. This document, developed without the involvement or knowledge of UNICEF, references UNICEF in a single sentence, “ILO/IPEC and UNICEF will be performing advisory functions.” UNICEF was not, in fact, involved in this project, in an advisory or any other capacity. UNICEF’s interactions with ECLT have focused on sharing information and increasing awareness about child rights issues related to the industry’s supply chain. This engagement is entirely in line with UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines and longstanding programmatic and advocacy work, under which the organization does not refrain from sharing information, promoting tools or making technical recommendations that may be important to identify, prevent, address and remediate child rights violations resulting from specific business practices.
The authors’ allegations that UNICEF received funding from tobacco manufacturers are also unfounded. UNICEF did not receive any funding from Philip Morris or Japan Tobacco International.
UNICEF is actively engaged with our Government partners around the world in efforts to reduce tobacco-related harm to children. These efforts, in countries including, for example, Bhutan, Brazil, Burundi, China, Mongolia, Namibia, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and Zambia, are primarily focused on substance abuse prevention and education programming. UNICEF has also been an active member of the United Nations’ Interagency Task Force on Non-Communicable Diseases which works on tobacco control at the global level, since the Task Force was created in 2013.
Since UNICEF, unfortunately, was offered no opportunity to comment on the article before it was published, and thus had no opportunity to correct these inaccuracies in advance, I must ask that you publish this letter in its entirety.
Sincerely,
Stefan Swartling Peterson
Chief of Health Section, Associate Director, Programme Division
UNICEF
[1] van der Eijk Y, Bialous SA, Glantz S. The Tobacco Industry and Children’s Rights, Pediatrics. 2018; 141(5):e20174106
[2] ECLT Foundation Program in the Philippines with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 2003 – 2005, http://www.eclt.org/filestore/DOLEProgramme.pdf