The tobacco industry manipulated the renowned children’s rights agency UNICEF for more than a dozen years, from 2003 until at least 2016, during which time UNICEF’s focus on children’s rights to a tobacco-free life was reduced, according to previously secret documents uncovered by UC San Francisco.
The research appears April 30, 2018, in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The humanitarian United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had formed an early collaboration with the World Health Organization to reduce tobacco use among youth and had backed the international Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, which established civil, political, economic, health and other protections, and has been accepted by every United Nations member except the United States. The researchers report that, as part of tobacco companies’ strategies to improve their corporate images, the industry “successfully engaged” with the children’s agency leading to less emphasis by UNICEF on tobacco control.
“UNICEF allowed itself to be manipulated by the tobacco industry,” said author Stella A. Bialous, DrPH, RN, an associate professor in the UCSF School of Nursing and longtime tobacco control expert whose research focuses on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.