Pressure builds on ILO to cut tobacco ties

Geneva, Switzerland /AFP /.More than 100 groups urged the International Labour Organization to stop taking money from tobacco companies as the UN body prepared Wednesday to once again debate the controversial issue.

In a letter addressed to ILO's governing body, a number of national and non-governmental health and anti-tobacco groups warned late Tuesday that the ILO risked "tarnishing its reputation and the effectiveness of its work" if it did not cut ties with the tobacco industry.

The UN labour agency has long been under fire for its partnerships with tobacco companies and has been accused of jeopardising global efforts to regulate tobacco use and reduce the negative health impacts of smoking.

The ILO's governing body is set to debate the issue again Wednesday, and health and anti-tobacco advocates are hoping it will decide to join other UN agencies -- most notably the World Health Organization -- in flatly refusing to engage with the industry.

- 'Spread death' -

"Tobacco companies that spread death and disease across the globe should have no place in the ILO, or any responsible organisation," said Matt Myers, head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids -- one of the organisations behind the letter.

It is unclear how quickly the ILO will be able to decide the matter -- the agency has already debated the issue and postponed a decision three times in the past year and a half. 

The ILO has until now justified its ties to the tobacco companies as a way of helping improve the working conditions of the some 60 million people involved in tobacco growing and production worldwide.

The agency has over the past decade received around $15 million from some of the world's biggest tobacco companies towards two "charitable partnerships" aimed at reducing child labour in tobacco fields across a range of countries.

The contract for one of those partnerships, ECLT, backed by British-American Tobacco, Philip Morris International and others to the tune of $5.0 million, expired last June, but ILO has allowed the programme to continue without additional funding until it reaches a decision.

The contract for the second partnership, ARISE, into which Japan Tobacco International (JTI) has poured $10 million, is meanwhile due to expire in December.

This "creates an opportunity for the ILO to start afresh in 2019," the letter said.

- 'No conflict' -

That would be a shame, according to JTI, which maintains its ARISE initiative has since 2011 helped remove 39,000 children from tobacco fields in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Brazil, and get them into school.

"We are committed to fighting child labour in our supply chain," Elaine McKay, JTI's Social Programmes Director, told AFP.

A number of tobacco-growing countries have also voiced opposition in the past to ILO cutting its tobacco ties.

Zambia's labour commissioner, Chanda Kaziya, told AFP earlier this month that children in his country were benefiting from the industry-funded programmes, and worried that other financing might not be available.

"I am not going to look around and see children suffer because I have no financing, and the sector is there and I can see millions of dollars there," he said.

But Tuesday's letter alleged that the projects had only "nominal impact" and charged that the companies involved were using them "to provide cover for egregious tobacco industry abuse".

"The tobacco industry has derived nearly 20 times more in economic benefit from unpaid child labour in Malawi alone than it spent on all its social programming," the letter maintained, pointing to a 2006 study published in the journal Tobacco Control.

"They seriously need some updated evidence," said JTI's McKay.

She also slammed the charge that Big Tobacco is using the ILO partnerships simply to "advance its objectives within the UN more broadly."

"I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there is no conflict. There is no undue influence," she said.