The International Labour Organization voted on Wednesday to delay the decision on whether to cut ties with Big Tobacco until November.
The decision could remove one of the tobacco industry’s final avenues of influence in the United Nations. Most other UN agencies developed firm policies against collaboration with the tobacco industry after the negotiation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the global anti-tobacco treaty.
The vote was originally scheduled due to public health, labor, and human rights communities escalating their call for the ILO to extricate itself from Big Tobacco, one of the deadliest industries on the planet.
Since 2015, the ILO has received more than $15 million USD from Japan Tobacco International and other tobacco corporations for programs that boost the industry’s public relations yet do little toward the ILO’s stated purpose of curbing child labor violations in tobacco fields, a problem largely caused by the tobacco industry itself.
“The ILO cannot address major human rights violations by collaborating with the perpetrators,” said Laurent Huber, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, who helped negotiate the global tobacco treaty. “Working with the tobacco industry on child labor is like inviting the fox to consult on how best to guard the henhouse.”
United Nations officials, including the Secretariat of the FCTC, have also called on the ILO to distance itself from the tobacco industry. The ILO’s coziness with the tobacco industry violates a core tenet of the FCTC, which establishes a firewall between the tobacco industry and public health policymaking.
Child labor in tobacco production is not a problem limited to the developing world. The U.S. government has acknowledged the risks of tobacco farming to children, which includes exposure to carcinogens and acute nicotine poisoning.
