The Emerging Human Right to Tobacco Control

Abstract

The economic and public health impacts of tobacco use, which kills approximately 5 million people per year and is expected to kill 10 million, mainly poor, people in 2030, are well known. Less attention has been paid to the impact of this epidemic on human rights and the potential application of a human rights perspective to tobacco control. This article examines the emerging human right to tobacco control in relation to other efforts to reduce the death and disability resulting from the activities of the tobacco industry, such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and suggests ways of implementing human rights mechanisms to address this public health disaster.

Making a human right to tobacco control: Expert and advocacy networks, framing and the right to health

“…1 The FCTC provides a good illustration of this dearth of human rights-based approaches in global tobacco control until recently. Indeed, aside from the preamble's reference to the right to health found in the WHO Constitution and UN treaties, human rights were absent from both the FCTC negotiation process and its final text (Taylor 2005, Dresler andMarks 2006). As Richard Daynard (2011), a prominent tobacco control advocate who participated in the negotiations, remembers:…”

“…The first one comprises the monitoring and reporting procedures for the UN human rights treaties that assert the right to health such as the ICESCR, the CEDAW and the CRC (e.g., Crow 2004, Dresler and Marks 2006, De Silva de Alwis 2008a, HRTCN 2008, Cabrera and Madrazo 2010, Dresler et al 2012, Marks 2012. These procedures oblige States to regularly submit official reports on how they fulfil their human rights obligations Á including their obligation to protect everyone's health Á to the relevant treaty bodies.…”

“…The second type of powerful tools praised and promoted by the HTC are human rights litigation strategies (e.g., Crow 2004, Dresler and Marks 2006, Gostin 2007, Cabrera and Madrazo 2010, Dresler et al 2012, Marks 2012. These strategies allow individuals and civil society groups to claim their right to health against a government in a court of law.…”

“…One is the way in which the members of the network have sought to ground the right to health in both internationally recognised legal norms such as article 12 IESCR and the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies such as the UN-CESCR's (2000) General comment 14 on the right to health. Both Crow's (2004) paper, Using human rights to promote global tobacco control, and Dresler and Marks's (2006) essay, The emerging human right to tobacco control, are excellent illustrations of such attempts. Another sign of HTC's legal understanding of the right to health is the importance given to trained lawyers within the network Á a pattern that, interestingly, seems to be common to a large number of transnational regulatory fields Garth 2011, 2012).…”

Human Rights and the Challenges of Science and Technology

“…It has long been argued that new rights must be subjected to "quality control" to avoid expanding the list of rights unproductively (Alston 1984). The most likely candidate-rights to follow the path of the right to water and sanitation in this emerging trend to expand on the list of human rights-such as the right to essential medicines and devices, the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, or the right to tobacco control as derivative from the right to health and to life-have close links to advances in science and technology (Dresler, C. & Marks, S. 2006;Marks 2009). It may be useful, therefore, to recall the way in which the relation between human rights and science and technology has been dealt with in the past.…”