Excluding Consumers, Endangering Lives: WHO’s Tobacco Control Failure

Monday, 13 October 2025, 8:20 am
Press Release: CAPHRA

The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates condemns the World Health Organisation FCTC Secretariat for creating insurmountable barriers to meaningful stakeholder participation in November's COP11 conference, as critical tobacco control decisions affecting 15 million adult consumers across Asia-Pacific hang in the balance. The WHO's South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) and Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) territories house over half the world's 1.1 billion smokers, with SEARO maintaining the highest smoking prevalence globally at 25% projected for 2025.

"The FCTC has weaponised Article 5.3 to silence the very people whose lives depend on evidence-based policy decisions," stated Nancy Loucas, Executive Coordinator of CAPHRA. "SEARO countries face catastrophic smoking rates whilst WPRO nations witness the collapse of abstinence-only approaches, yet consumer advocates remain deliberately excluded from policy development."

Indonesia exemplifies the urgent need for harm reduction inclusion. With 64.7% of men smoking – the highest male smoking rate worldwide – the nation faces 300,000 annual tobacco deaths. Independent research demonstrates that embracing tobacco harm reduction could save 4.6 million Indonesian lives by 2060.

Recent data exposes the failure of WHO's restrictive tobacco control framework across both regions. New Zealand's pragmatic harm reduction approach achieved dramatic smoking reductions from 16.4% in 2011 to 6.9% by 2024. This contrasts sharply with Australia's prohibitionist model, which drives consumers toward illicit markets. "SEARO and WPRO represent the battleground where evidence-based harm reduction could save millions of lives, yet the WHO persists with ideological abstinence-only policies that demonstrably fail," Loucas continued.

The WHO FCTC has approved merely 26 NGOs for observer status over two decades, compared with over 3,000 organisations granted access to climate conferences. COP11 registration requirements, published just days before deadlines, demand extensive personal documentation designed to exclude consumer advocates.

"The FCTC cannot claim human rights credibility whilst silencing the voices of 15 million adult consumers across Asia-Pacific," Loucas declared. "People who live within SEARO and WPRO deserve transparent, inclusive policy development that prioritises lives over ideology."

CAPHRA demands immediate WHO FCTC reform to grant formal observer status to consumers and abandon opposition to evidence-based harm reduction strategies.

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