In 2012, Australia became the first World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) Party to implement plain packaging for tobacco products. Australia faced multiple legal challenges against the measure under domestic and international trade and investment law, brought or supported by the tobacco industry. Australia was ultimately successful in overcoming these legal challenges with the World Trade Organization Appellate Body dismissing the final challenge against the measure in June 2020.
However, Australia’s experience is illustrative of a common challenge to WHO FCTC implementation. Since the WHO FCTC entered into force in 2005, legal challenges have frequently been cited as a barrier to implementation. Since 2010, successive WHO FCTC Conferences of the Parties have mandated work on the relationship between the WHO FCTC and trade and investment agreements and actions taken by the tobacco industry to attempt to subvert and undermine tobacco control measures. As a result, in December 2013, the McCabe Centre for Law & Cancer based in Melbourne, Australia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the WHO FCTC Convention Secretariat to serve as the first WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub, focusing on Legal Challenges.
Read more about the work and accomplishments of the Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges in supporting Parties to implement lifesaving tobacco control measures over the last decade and look at what the next decade holds in this new commentary published in BMJ's Tobacco Control.
Read the published article