The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s 3rd Conference of the Parties (COP-3) was held in Durban, South Africa in November 2008. Attended by several hundred high-level health and diplomatic delegates from the more than 160 countries that have now ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the meeting was focused on developing guidelines for implementing the treaty’s provisions. For Perspectives this month, several attendees were invited to submit their impressions of the meeting (see below). My own impressions:

Looking over the wonderful photos by Andrew Kerr on the cover of this issue, I was struck by their contrast with a recent cover of the tobacco industry’s trade rag, Tobacco Reporter, which featured a photo from a global tobacco industry networking forum held in Brazil just the month before COP-3. On that cover, a Conga line of light-skinned men (presumably forum attendees) dressed in Western business clothing, their foreheads shiny with sweat, trail across a hotel ballroom floor behind a scantily clad dancer. The cover headline: “Leading the way”.

To me, that image epitomises a world dominated by Western and, largely, male business interests that too often ignore, disadvantage or exploit women, the poor and people of colour. The cover of this issue of Tobacco Control offers a refreshing contrast. As you see, the women on this cover are leading the way to a brighter future for women all over the globe by intervening to end the predatory activities of the tobacco industry.

As a first-time attendee at this conference, I am sure I missed many of the nuances of the work that delegates and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been doing for years. However, it was moving to me to see the delegates adopting very strong language about the tobacco industry, and declaring unequivocally that tobacco industry “corporate social responsibility” activities are a form of marketing and should be prohibited. The delegates also emphasised the fundamental conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and those of public health. To have these points explicitly made in an international policy guideline is unprecedented. History was being made.

Coming from a country where intensely oppositional politics are often the norm, it was also refreshing to me to watch the delicate dance of diplomatic negotiations—a particular form of politeness in which the representatives of nations worked through their differences without name-calling and recrimination. The participation of countries with state ownership in tobacco companies made for some tensions that were eventually resolved, albeit sometimes by emphasising the voluntary nature of the FCTC guidelines. None the less, the strong international support for effective tobacco control displayed at the meeting surely had an impact even among those countries’ delegates, and should eventually have an impact in those countries.

Less moved, I’m sure, were the tobacco industry executives who lurked and slouched at the back of the halls, seemingly unconcerned about being “outed” by an unknown advocate’s printed flyer, but keenly following the proceedings. While they were excluded from any official role in the deliberations, I am confident that behind the scenes they were actively gathering intelligence on the tobacco control movement and trying to identify areas of weakness. The global tobacco control movement surely does have its weaknesses, but they were little in evidence at this meeting, which brought together high-level diplomats, researchers, health authorities, advocates and activists from every part of the world. While the battle rages on, we should celebrate at least this moment of achievement in the struggle to supplant the tobacco industry’s old, exploitative world picture with the diverse, dynamic new world of global tobacco control and health justice.