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Towards health with justice: making the tobacco industry accountable through administrative liability
  1. Deborah Sy1,2,
  2. Fatima El-Awa3,
  3. Jawad Ahmed Al-Lawati4,
  4. Behzad Valizadeh5,
  5. Sophia El-Gohary3,
  6. Radwa El-Wakil3,
  7. Ambika Narain1
  1. 1Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), Bangkok, Thailand
  2. 2Health Justice, Manila, Philippines
  3. 3Tobacco Free Initiative, World Health Organisation Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt
  4. 4Directorate General of Primary Health Care, Ministry of Health Oman, Muscat, Oman
  5. 5Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Tehran, Iran (the Islamic Republic of)
  1. Correspondence to Deborah Sy, Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, SEATCA, Bangkok, Thailand; debby{at}ggtc.world

Abstract

For many decades, the transnational tobacco industry has evaded the consequences of harming people and the planet. Despite selling a deadly product, it has continued to remain one of the most profitable industries in the world, now venturing into ‘wellness and pharmaceutical’ businesses as part of its diversification strategy. Meanwhile, efforts to make the tobacco industry pay through court systems have not progressed due to the inherent challenges within the judicial systems in most countries. This paper explores mechanisms for ensuring accountability through administrative liability, including the use of compensation mechanisms and adjudicatory bodies. Such mechanisms operationalise vital principles and practices derived from international law, such as the imposition of effective, proportionate, and dissuasive non-criminal sanctions, victims’ right to compensation, and ‘polluter pays’ principles. Measures such as taxation, surcharges, penalties, financial guarantees or insurance, along with the establishment of adjudicatory bodies and trust funds, are discussed. In order to hold the tobacco industry to account for the wide range of harms caused by its products and its misconduct; policies on ‘liability’ must clearly articulate how the industry will compensate for past and future harms in a manner that deters it from causing further damage.

  • Tobacco industry
  • Liability
  • Global health
  • Human rights
  • Public policy

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Footnotes

  • Presented at Parts of this research was presented by DKS at a side event on Liability (Article 19) at the WHO FCTC Conference of the Parties Meeting at its 10th Session. The title of the presentation is: Liability and Accountability (of the Tobacco Industry): Beyond the Courts

  • Contributors This document is prepared by DKS of the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC). FE-A of WHO Office of the Eastern Mediterranean Region (WHO EMRO), JAA-L (Ministry of Health, Oman) and BV (Ministry of Health, Iran) provided valuable inputs to the draft in relation to a WHO EMRO meeting and a subsequent upcoming publication Towards Better Tobacco Control Through Justice: Better Understating and New Approaches (upcoming publication). SE-G and RE-W of WHO EMRO facilitated the manuscript preparation. AN (GGTC) facilitated manuscript preparation, editing and coordination.Farah Niazi and Alvin Escritor assisted in validating the manuscript proof.

  • Funding The work on liability is based on project outputs that were supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies' STOP Project. Findings from a WHO EMRO-funded report helped the authors produce content for this material.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.