Tactics range from the exploitation of farmers and use of child labour to threats and intimidation, and a “continent-spanning spy network”. All to pursue BAT’s own commercial goals.

Examples from across the region feature on an illustrative map, and below are links to further reading which provide a comprehensive understanding of the company’s activities in Africa.

Sabotage, Deceit and Duplicity: British American Tobacco Uncovered

Significant new reports and briefings can be found on the BAT Uncovered micro-site of TCRG’s partner organisation STOP at exposetobacco.org

These cover new allegations of bribery across Africa, and dirty tricks in South Africa.

Briefing papers on BAT’s alleged capture of state agencies, potential complicity in smuggling in South Africa and alleged connection to an attempted bribery conspiracy in Zimbabwe will be published on this site in due course.

Buying Influence and Advantage in Africa

Analysis of whistleblower documents by the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath found a “large number of questionable payments” made by BAT over a five-year period.  This huge international corporation used these payments to influence policy and undermine competing tobacco companies, both international and local.

• Read the report summary: Buying Influence and Advantage in Africa: An Analysis of British American Tobacco’s Questionable Payments

BAT made payments impacting ten countries in East and Central Africa. They were made to politicians and civil servants, staff of competitor companies, journalists, farmers and others involved in positions of potential influence.  The use of these payments appeared to be systematized and supported by senior staff, including in BAT’s London office.

The full report details the payments and describes the serious consequences of this unethical business activity. It also suggests that governments globally should more closely examine BAT’s behaviour.

• Read the full report: “Unlawful Bribes?”: A documentary analysis showing British American Tobacco’s use of payments to secure policy and competitive advantage in Africa¹

The leaked source documents are publicly available in the UCSF Industry Documents Library Africa Collection (University of California, San Francisco).

Dirty Tricks in South Africa

In the report on British American Tobacco in South Africa, TCRG researchers explain how BAT has fought to maintain its dominance of this key market over decades, in the face of increased competition and growing illicit trade. The report describes how the company has used “any means necessary” to hold its position, including paying another company to run a “massive secret surveillance and informant network in Southern Africa on behalf of BAT”.

The report details BAT’s use of third party service providers, allegedly overseen and run by senior operatives at BAT’s London headquarters.  It also explains how BAT is “yet to face meaningful consequences for its actions either in the region or at home in the U.K.” after the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) dropped its five-year investigation in January 2021.

BAT has repeatedly denied accusations of corporate espionage, corruption and law-breaking,² but new analysis of leaked documents raises serious questions about BAT’s activities in South Africa, particularly in relation to tobacco smuggling and tax evasion.

The research by the TCRG was carried out in collaboration with BBC’s Panorama, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Organized Crime and Reporting Project.

• Read the report: British American Tobacco in South Africa: Any Means Necessary

See also:

The BBC’s Panorama documentary programme, broadcast on 13 September 2021, which “unveils new revelations about the corrupt practices deployed by one of Britain’s biggest companies.”³

• Watch ‘Dirty Secrets of the Cigarette Business’ (BBC iPlayer, UK only, registration required)
• Watch on BBC World Saturday 18 September 2021 (Africa link, switch to other regions at the bottom of the page, note times are GMT)

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Read: Smoke Screen: BAT’s agents brokered bribe proposal⁴
• Listen: Smoke Screen: Love, bribes, lies and spies in the tobacco industry

Victoria Hollingsworth tells the true story of corrupt practices behind the scenes at British American Tobacco. Hear from the very people caught up in this world as the Bureau sinks deep into the dirty underbelly of the tobacco industry in South Africa.

BAT in Africa: A History of Double Standards

TobaccoTactics details the history of BAT’s double standards, exposing a difference between its stated goals and principles, and its activities in low and middle-income African countries.  It includes links to earlier allegations against BAT, featured in a 2015 Panorama programme and media coverage at the time.

• See British American Tobacco in Africa: A History Double Standards

This page brings the story up to date…

• See British American Tobacco in Africa: Continuing Allegations of Misbehaviour

References

The post The BAT Files: How British American Tobacco Bought Influence in Africa appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

Here we look at the some of the research published since then which have added to our understanding of the company.

For more details on the pages published by Tobacco Tactics on British American Tobacco in Africa visit The BAT Files.

Introduction

In 2015, the BBC’s Panorama programme used documents from an industry whistleblower to highlight allegations of alleged bribery by British American Tobacco.

According to the evidence supplied by former BAT employee Paul Hopkins, the firm allegedly arranged bribes totalling US$26,000 for officials in Rwanda, Burundi and Comoros Islands. BAT insisted it conducted its business with honesty, integrity and transparency.

Even though BAT and those featured in the program issued denials about the allegations, in 2015 the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began investigating, leading to a formal criminal investigation into BAT and associated persons in 2017.

In January 2021 the SFO concluded: “Following extensive investigation and a comprehensive review of the available evidence, the SFO has concluded its investigation into British American Tobacco, its subsidiaries and associated persons. The evidence in this case did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors.”

The SFO added that it would “continue to offer assistance to the ongoing investigations of other law enforcement partners. We thank our international law enforcement partners, and in particular the Kenyan Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), for their assistance in the SFO’s investigation.”⁵

Document analysis

In 2021, new research was published adding to the understanding of BAT’s operations in Africa. Panorama followed up on its 2015 programme, which mainly focussed on East and Central Africa, with a new investigation into operations in Southern Africa. ⁶ Alongside this STOP published its own reports.

The Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath also did a deeper analysis of the Hopkins documents and a second set of documents disclosed from a court case in Uganda involving former BAT employee Solomon Muyita. Both Hopkins and Muyita had invoked BAT’s whistleblower policy.^{78 9}

BAT payments

This analysis looked at 236 payments totalling US$601,502 made between July 2008 and May 2013 to dozens of people including politicians, civil servants, journalists, farmers and staff at competitor companies.

BAT made payments impacting 10 countries Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Payments took multiple forms including hand-delivered cash, bank wire transfers, spending money, cars, campaign donations, per diems, and plane tickets.

According to the research, the payments were used for two broad purposes. To obtain information and influence policy and to gather information and undermine competitors. The authors conclude:

“The available evidence suggests BAT’s use of payments in Africa was extensive, systematised, and supported at a high level within parts of the company. Payments were used to buy political and competitive advantage.”¹⁰

According to the analysis of the documents sets, the information suggests payments were a routine part of BAT’s business practices in Africa, with senior staff aware of the practice. Third party companies, referred to as “service providers”, were contracted to undertake consultancy services for BAT to make the payments.

BAT’s official policy on corruption as stated on its website is: “Corruption causes distortion in markets and harms economic, social and political development, particularly in developing countries. Our Standards of Business Conduct make clear that it is wholly unacceptable for our companies and employees to be involved or implicated in any way in corrupt practice.”¹¹

Influencing policy

As the original research in 2015 revealed, BAT had been aiming to influence policy changes in several countries. The analysis of these two document sets confirmed and expanded this area of concern.

Attempts were made to frustrate the passing of legislation based on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Burundi, Comoros, Rwanda and Uganda. Civil servants and politicians in particular were targeted through the payments. As a result tobacco control legislation in three of the countries is still not compliant with the FCTC while Uganda had a bitter four-year battle to pass its Tobacco Control Act.

The payments were also used to undermine efforts to control tobacco smuggling. In Kenya, BAT campaigned to have its own system in place for tracking tobacco products rather than an independent one as mandated by the Illicit Trade Protocol.¹⁰

Sabotaging competitors

BAT has a very strong market position in Africa and looks to maintain and expand that position. As such payments appear linked to gaining information on competitors – these include Mastermind Tobacco Kenya, Continental Tobacco Uganda and Leaf Tobacco & Commodities Uganda. It also targeted international rival Japan Tobacco International (JTI) which was operating in Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic Congo.

Tactics used included funding a fake trade union to foment labour unrest, pay for sources inside companies and take advantage of complaints to regulators.

Other examples of payments

The evidence that BAT used payments to influence policy and damage competitors between over a number of years is not the first time that a tobacco company has been accused of such activity.

Evidence from Australia suggests that the tobacco industry may have used bribery in the 1970s to help bring down a minority Tasmanian government attempting to impose a tobacco tax, although the police inquiry cleared the politician in question.¹² A 2000 court case brought by the European Union and its member states accused tobacco companies of bribing public officials as part of its global scheme to smuggle cigarettes.¹³¹⁴ Maithripala Sirisena who later became the President of Sri Lanka in 2015, alleged that, when trying to introduce large pictorial health warnings as Health Minister, BAT tried to bribe him, although this was “categorically denied” by the company.¹⁵

The findings also align with widespread evidence from South Africa of payments to monitor and undermine competitors.

Tobacco smuggling in Mali

While the two document sets from the whistleblowers provided evidence of wide-ranging payments across many countries, another investigation in 2021 uncovered further concerns.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) had access to internal BAT documents as well as trade data and interviews with participants to document activities in the country.¹⁶. It found that BAT took advantage of the precarious military situation and over-supplied the country with cigarettes. In doing so this keeps BAT brands in circulation; but also generates profits for jihadists and militias.

“This is their playground,” Hana Ross, a University of Cape Town economist who researches tobacco, said of the industry. “They know they can get away with stuff. It’s much easier to bribe. It’s much easier to cheat the system,’’ she said. “Governments here are generally weak. This is where they do things that they don’t dare to do in Europe anymore.”¹⁶

A spokesperson for BAT said: “At BAT, we have established anti-illicit trade teams operating at global and local levels. We also have robust policies and procedures in place to fight this issue and fully support regulators, governments and international organizations in seeking to eliminate all forms of illicit trade.”

Further reading

BAT Uncovered

British American Tobacco in South Africa: Any Means Necessary

Buying Influence and Advantage in Africa: An Analysis of British American Tobacco’s Questionable Payments

Tobacco Tactics Resources

The BAT Files

British American Tobacco: Dirty Deeds in Africa

References

The post British American Tobacco in Africa: Continuing Allegations of Misbehaviour appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

In reality, the ECLT Foundation is both funded and governed by tobacco companies, and is a vital part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy.

All four major Transnational Tobacco Companies (TTCs) have been part of ECLT’s board from its creation in 2000: British American Tobacco (BAT), Imperial Brands (IMB), Japan Tobacco International (JTI), and Philip Morris International (PMI). Other organisations that are, or have been, on the ECLT board include Swedish Match, Gallaher (now JTI), Scandinavian Tobacco and the International Tobacco Growers Association, as well as other national tobacco companies and tobacco growers.¹⁹For a full list of current ECLT Board members, see the section below.

In 2001, the year after it was formed, ECLT reported income from members, the bulk of its income source, as CHF247,000 (approximately USD$247,000). Twenty years later, in 2021, its reported income had grown to USD $5,737,521, which came entirely from “donor contributions”.^20212223 According to the ECLT’s internal regulations, organisations and companies represented on the Board “must commit themselves to a financial contribution in favor of the Foundation”.²⁴

ECLT states that its “sole purpose and mandate is to prevent and protect children from child labour wherever tobacco is grown”.¹⁸ It promotes itself, and its public-private partnerships (PPPs) with the United Nations (UN), as part of the solution to tackling child labour in low and middle-income countries.

History

The ECLT Foundation was set up in Geneva in September 2000 as part of a wider strategy by the major tobacco companies, particularly BAT, to protect their corporate reputations and position themselves as “socially responsible”.²⁵

Its establishment followed high profile exposés of child labour on tobacco farms in the late 1990s, notably in Malawi, and the adoption of International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182 in June 1999, which outlawed the “worst forms of child labour”.²⁶

ECLT grew out of a joint agreement in 2000 between BAT and the tobacco industry front group the International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA),²⁷ with The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), to develop a programme of research and education aimed at eradicating child labour.²⁸

BAT: “A Good Opportunity to Move to the Moral High Ground”

A peer-reviewed 2006 academic study on the ECLT Foundation’s pilot project in Malawi concluded, after analysing relevant BAT internal documents from 1998-2002, that the tobacco giant was using child labour projects as a means of enhancing its reputation. It argued that:

“rather than actively and responsibly working to solve the problem of child labour in growing tobacco, the company acted to co-opt the issue to present themselves over as a ‘socially responsible corporation’ by releasing a policy statement claiming the company’s commitment to end harmful child labour practices, holding a global child labour conference with trade unions and other key stakeholders, and contributing nominal sums of money for development projects largely unrelated to efforts to end child labour.”²⁵

The study, by Otañez et al, revealed how the IUF, ILO and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) had commissioned a film that showed children as young as five working on tobacco farms in Malawi during the spring harvest in 1999. The idea was to put pressure on the companies and the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM, now Tobacco Europe) over its denials that child labour was occurring there. However, internal BAT documents released to the public through a litigation settlement in the United States and now online at the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents database show that IUF General Secretary Ron Oswald had promised that the film would not be anti-tobacco and “would be consigned to the archives” if the CECCM and companies cooperated and acknowledged the child labour problem in Malawi.²⁹²⁵

The IUF signed a joint declaration on child labour in June 1999 with the ITGA, witnessed by ILO Executive Director Kari Tapiola.³⁰ Correspondence that year between BAT and Hallmark, its UK public relations agency, showed a series of revised draft statements between IUF and ITGA. The final published version on the conference website³¹ – drafted by Hallmark and BAT – notably dropped the IUF’s proposed inclusion of “respect for worker’s rights to freedom of association (as defined in ILO Convention 97)”.³²

In October 2000, BAT co-organised a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, with the IUF and ITGA, titled “Eliminating Child Labour: Establishing Best Practices in Tobacco Farming”.³³³⁴³⁵ According to the event brochure, the ILO’s Kari Tapiola was a keynote speaker, alongside two BAT staff, the ITGA’s president and the IUF’s Ron Oswald.³³³⁶ A BAT executive later deemed the conference “a huge success” in countering rising international concern among the UN, OECD, ILO and EU over human rights and labour standards – an agenda BAT described as being pushed by NGOs and other stakeholders “who seemed to be winning”. BAT’s international development affairs manager Shabanji Opukah wrote on 9 November 2000:

“Clearly, the successful launch of the ECLT has given us an excellent and rare opportunity to engage with our stakeholders on major platforms around what are today amongst some of the high profile and contentious global issues affecting reputation of international business.”

adding that:

“Our partnership with the IUF and ITGA gives us a good opportunity to move to the moral high ground on this particular issue and we would like to make use of it in line with the BAT CORA Consumer and Regulatory Affairs strategy for recognition as a responsible tobacco company. This strategy identifies corporate conduct and accountability as one of the six reputation management initiatives. Stakeholder engagement and communication is in this platform.”²⁵³⁷

According to the minutes of an October 2001 Tobacco Workers Trade Group Meeting at which ECLT’s first Executive Director Marc Hofstetter and project manager Alain Berthoud introduced themselves, the IUF was to hold the rotating presidency of the ECLT Foundation for the first two years. Ron Oswald was its first president.³⁸

The IUF is no longer a board member of the ECLT Foundation. An ILO document on its tobacco industry partnerships in 2017 stated:

“the IUF served as ECLT’s President until 2013, when it withdrew, citing the viability and success of the Foundation as reasons for its decision to direct its capacity devoted to eliminating child labour elsewhere”.³⁹

In explaining their decision to withdraw, the IUF also cited the time and resources needed to ensure “our totally uncompromising position that child labour should not be used in any form stay a core feature of the ECLT’s work”, given ECLT’s inclusion of “all major industry players” on its executive board.⁴⁰

Funding Agreements with the ILO

From 2002 until 2018, the ECLT Foundation had a Public-Private Partnership agreement with the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO acted as advisor to the Foundation’s board alongside Save the Children Switzerland.

In March 2017, the ILO disclosed that it had received more than US$5.3 million from ECLT since 2002, but did not provide details on how this funding had been spent.³⁹Its relationship with ECLT, beyond acting as an advisor and observer to ECLT’s board, included the following agreements:

• The first agreement between ILO and ECLT covered the period 2002 to 2010 and aimed to fund research on child labour practices in Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, East Africa, and specifically, to eliminate child labour in Tanzania.⁴¹
• The second agreement, covering the period between 2011 and 2015, focused on child labour in Malawi.⁴¹
• The third agreement from 2015 until June 2018 was aimed at reducing child labour practices in Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania, promoting dialogue among tobacco growers’ organisations, and developing advice on hazardous tobacco farming work.³⁹

Following sustained pressure from the World Health Organization and more than 100 global groups, the ILO finally announced in November 2018 that it would stop accepting tobacco industry funding for its projects and would also not renew ECLT’s contract, which had expired in June of that year.⁴²⁴³

However, the ILO remains listed as “non-executive advisor” to the ECLT Board, as of 2022.²¹⁴⁴

Membership of the UN Global Compact

As of June 2022, the ECLT Foundation remains a member of the Child Labour Platform of the voluntary UN Global Compact (UNGC) Human Rights and Labour Working Group – for which the ILO provides the secretariat. It became a member in 2015.⁴⁵

This is despite the UNGC’s decision in 2017 to permanently sever ties with tobacco companies, following the adoption of a breakthrough United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) resolution (E/2017/L.21) that encouraged UN agencies to develop policies to prevent tobacco industry interference.⁴⁶

The UNGC Integrity policy review, published in October 2017, stated:

“the UN Global Compact will de-list participating companies which fall under the tobacco exclusion. This new exclusionary criterion is strictly limited to companies that produce and/or manufacture tobacco or are part of a joint venture, have a subsidiary or affiliate stake in a company that produces and/or manufactures tobacco.”⁴⁷

Relationship with UNICEF

From 2003 to 2005, ECLT funded a programme to prevent child labour in tobacco growing in the Philippines, in which UNICEF acted as an advisor.⁴⁸

In a study published in the journal Paediatrics on the tobacco industry and children’s rights, the authors described ECLT as one of several front groups used by the industry to successfully engage with UNICEF:

“After UNICEF’s corporate engagement guidelines were loosened in 2003, tobacco companies successfully engaged with UNICEF directly and via front groups, including the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation. This was part of an overall tobacco industry strategy to improve its corporate image, infiltrate the United Nations, and weaken global tobacco-control efforts.”⁴⁹

The ECLT Foundation rejected these allegations as “baseless” and “false”.⁵⁰

UNICEF also published a rebuttal, in which it stated that it had not worked on ECLT projects in an advisory capacity, that its only interactions with the Foundation had been limited to “sharing information and increasing awareness about child rights issues related to the industry’s supply chain,” and that it had not received tobacco industry funding.⁵¹

Questionable impact on child labour practices

After almost two decades of work by the ECLT Foundation, child labour remains entrenched in many tobacco-growing regions.

ECLT has pointed to its success in removing over 195,000 children from tobacco farms since 2011 and sending over 32,000 to school and vocational training.⁵²However, critics of the Foundation and its tobacco industry members argue that it has done little to redress or target the structural issues afflicting these regions, instead publicising the positive, and often individually-focused, stories.⁴⁸

In 2018, a series of Guardian investigations revealed “rampant” child labour in Indonesia, Malawi, Mexico and the United States.^535455565758 The ILO similarly noted in 2017 that “surveys indicate that child labour is rampant in impoverished tobacco-growing communities”.³⁹ Following the Guardian investigations, a legal claim was launched in the UK in December 2020 against BAT and Imperial Brands, alleging they profited from child labour in Malawi.⁵⁹

• For more information on Child Labour in Tobacco growing, see our page CSR: Child Labour

Professor Marty Otañez, an anthropologist from the University of Colorado, and lead author of the previously mentioned 2006 study on BAT and ECLT in Malawi, is a long-standing observer of tobacco farming in that country. Otañez told The Guardian that welfare projects were “pushing out goodwill on behalf of tobacco companies to address some of the problems but avoid the harder issues of leaf prices and living and earnings”.⁵³ Tenant farmers on tobacco estates in Malawi, for example, earn just US$224 a year.⁵⁵

In September 2017, the Malawi tobacco farmers’ union TOAWUM wrote “on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Malawi farmers” to the ILO’s Governing Body, asking it to ban public-private partnerships with the tobacco industry at its upcoming 331st meeting. In its letter, TOAWUM stated that initiatives such as the ECLT Foundation,

“insufficiently address root causes of tobacco-related child labour, which is endemic poverty among tobacco farmers. That poverty is exacerbated by contracting schemes developed by the very companies funding some projects for ECLT.”⁶⁰

TOAWUM’s criticism echoed that of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), which wrote to ILO Director Clarence Thomas in 2013 following its own research into child labour and ECLT’s projects in the ASEAN region. It highlighted the hypocrisy of an industry whose business model perpetuates child labour in its supply chain:

“Unlike other industries that have a zero tolerance for child labour, the tobacco industry has set no such polices or target date for complete eradication of child labour. The tobacco industry, while publicly condemning child labour, continues to purchase and use leaves that are produced by child labour and profits from them.

“The tobacco industry’s miniscule contributions through so-called corporate social responsibility activities including the ECLT are a whitewash of the problem. The more serious issue is that these CSR activities provide a convenient platform for tobacco companies to gain access to policy makers who are responsible to approve and implement tobacco control measures. The endorsement from IPEC (Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour) and ILO of ECLT only serves to strengthen and protect the tobacco industry.”⁴⁸

Legal Threats Against International Tobacco Control Groups

In July 2018, amid a concerted campaign by the WHO and 100 global NGOs to get the ILO to terminate all its tobacco-related partnerships, the ECLT Foundation instructed a Swiss law firm to issue a “formal notice before legal proceedings” against the US-based NGO Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK).⁶¹

The legal notice from Capt & Wyss, solicitors for ECLT, emphasised the organisation’s “independence” as a registered non-profit Swiss organisation, and demanded that CTFK “immediately” delete from a press release posted on its website the “defamatory”, “untrue and misleading” references to ECLT as a:

• “tobacco-industry-dominated group”;
• “front group for tobacco industry interests under the guise of a corporate social responsibility initiative” and;
• that it “represents an alliance of tobacco companies and growers – led exclusively by the tobacco industry”.

In addition, the legal notice stated that ECLT “seeks a public and online apology, respectively rectification, relating to this unlawful publication.”⁶¹

In his response, CTFK’s President Matthew L. Myers noted that his organisation’s descriptions of ECLT were “well-documented based on the best publicly available information”, “factually accurate” and furthermore were already in the public domain. CTFK received no subsequent response to its reply from either the lawyers or ECLT.⁶²

ECLT also published an online rebuttal to an October 2017 press release by the global NGO Framework Convention Alliance on Tobacco Control (FCA) in which it rejected FCA’s “false” assertions that “Reports have repeatedly claimed that ECLT’s work aims to keep farmers dependent on aid from the tobacco industry to avoid them abandoning the sector.(sic)” and that “ECLT allows the tobacco industry to promote a positive public image while continuing the practices that cause labour exploitation in the first place”.⁶³ The rebuttal was reprinted in Tobacco Reporter.⁶⁴

Following emails from ECLT’s executive director that same month, the FCA later received a ‘cease and desist’ notice from Capt & Wyss in January 2018 specifically noting the first point above and the FCA’s public “Letter to the UN Secretary General on Cooperation between the Tobacco Industry and the ILO”, signed by over 180 organisations in October 2017.⁶⁵ Although the FCA did take down both documents as a precautionary response, no further action was taken⁶⁶and these remain in the public domain.⁶⁷

ECLT Team

From its inception, the ECLT Foundation has typically employed highly experienced human rights and development professionals, many of them with solid track records of working within the UN system either as staff or consultants. This strategy appears to have been critical to tobacco companies’ insistence on the organisation’s “independence” and for its dealings with the ILO and other UN agencies such as UNICEF.

Internal BAT documents now online at the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive show that BAT, when setting up ECLT in 2000, was “looking for an executive with experience in the UN and NGO sectors and ability to raise funds on a global scale. The individual will also need to have high diplomatic campaigning and lobbying skills and a good span of experience in these areas. Knowledge of French and other UN languages is also desired…”³⁷

In one case, ECLT’s new executive director in 2008 came directly from working with the ILO in Tanzania.

Leadership

A list of current staff can be found on the ECLT website.

• Karima Jambulatova, Executive Director (from May 2019). Has worked with ECLT since 2013.¹⁷
• David Hammond, Executive Director (2017-2019). Barrister and founder of a marine human rights organization.⁶⁸
• Sonia C. Velázquez, Executive Director (2012-2017). Previously worked with Plan International, America Humane and Save the Children, among others. Was instrumental in gaining ECLT its ECOSOC consultative status and UN Global Compact membership from 2015.⁶⁹
• Marilyn Blaeser, Executive Director (2008-2011), joined ECLT after working for ILO as Chief Technical Advisor (Child Labour) in Tanzania. CV includes six years with UNICEF and UNHCR.⁷⁰
• Mark Hofstetter, (2000-2005). Was Head of Delegation at the International Committee of the Red Cross for 13 years before becoming ECLT’s first director.⁷¹

Board Members

ECLT’s board is mostly made up of industry executives from cigarette manufacturers and tobacco leaf growers. The following individuals formed the ECLT Board in 2022:⁴⁴

• Mike Ligon, ECLT President, from the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, a regular speaker at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) (succeeded Antonio Abrunhosa from the International Tobacco Growers Association)
• Elaine McKay, ECLT Vice-President, from JTI and Japan Tobacco Inc.
• Michiel Reerink, treasurer, from tobacco-leaf manufacturer Alliance One International, previously affiliated with JTI and a regular attendee at the GTNF.
• Mauro Gonzalez, from PMI.
• Surinder Sond, from Imperial Brands.
• Mercedes Vazquez from the International Tobacco Growers Association.
• Mathew Wilde, from Contraf-Nicotex-Tobacco GMBH.
• Jennie Galbraith, from British American Tobacco, an attendee at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum in 2013 when she was group head of sustainability at BAT.
• Emmett Harrison, from Swedish Match.
• Itsanne Fokkema, from Hail & Cotton Inc., a tobacco leaf dealer, with purchasing and processing capacity to provide Flue Cured, Burley, Dark Fired, Oriental and other tobacco manufacturers.
• Glyn Morgan, from Premium Tobacco.
• Mette Valentin, from the Scandinavian Tobacco Group.
• Simon Steyne, independent expert.

Projects and partners

ECLT provides details of its activity on its website and in its annual reports. In 2021 it was active in nine countries; in some it worked directly with communities and NGOs, while in others it worked with government, industry, and other stakeholders.²⁰

Argentina

With the Provincial Commission for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour, a public entity, on an awareness-raising campaign in the northern, tobacco-growing province of Misiones. ECLT also provided input for a training curriculum on child labour in Buenos Aires.²⁰⁷²

Guatemala

With Defensa Niños y Niñas Costa Rica, in the municipality of San José La Máquina, providing “market-driven youth employment training”.²⁰⁷³⁷⁴

Indonesia

Part of the ‘Partnership in Action Against Child Labour in Agriculture’ (PAACLA), a multi-stakeholder initiative coordinated by the Ministry of National Development Planning. With Jaringan LSM Penghapusan Pekerja Anak (JARAK), Lembaga Pengkajian Kemasyarakatan dan Pembangunan (LPKP) and Yayasan Tunas Alam Indonesia (SANTAI).²⁰⁷⁵

Malawi

With CARE Malawi, the MicroLoan Foundation, and Rays of Hope.²⁰⁷³

Mozambique

With IDE Mozambique and Fundação Apoio Amigo. From 2018 to 2021 ECLT had a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Mozambique.²⁰⁷³⁷⁶

Tanzania

With Tabora Development Foundation Trust (TDFT) and the Tanzania Association of Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (TAWLAE).²⁰⁷⁷

Uganda

With Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) and ECLA Uganda.²⁰⁷³

United States

With state and federal authorities, academia, and other stakeholders on research into child labour in agriculture.²⁰

Zimbabwe

Participated in a survey on child labour in tobacco growing carried out by the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency and disseminated by the Ministry of Labour, Public Service and Social Welfare. Supported the creation of a working group on child labour by the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.²⁰

The ECLT also worked in Kyrgyzstan until 2017.⁷⁸

Tobacco Tactics Resources

• CSR: Child Labour
• Greenwashing
• International Labour Organization
• International Tobacco Growers Association
• Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
• CSR Strategy
• United Nations Global Compact
• Legal Strategy

Relevant Links

• ECLT Foundation website
• Child labour in the tobacco industry TCRG blog
• STOP brief on ECLT (2019)

References

The post Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco-Growing Foundation (ECLT) appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

• Click here for an infographic of industry interference in Uganda.
• Click here for the evidence countering industry arguments against tobacco control in Uganda.

Timeline of Industry Interference Concerning the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill (UTCB) 2014

TobaccoTactics Resources

For more information on the tobacco industry and Africa, see:

• Uganda – Country Profile
• British American Tobacco Uganda
• Uganda – BAT Marketing Strategies
• Uganda – BAT’s Tactics to Undermine the Tobacco Control Bill
• Uganda – Infographic on Industry Interference with the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill
• British American Tobacco in Africa: A History of Double Standards.
• All Africa pages

References

The post Uganda- Timeline: Industry Interference with the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill 2014 appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

Smoking in Uganda

The 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Report on Trends in Prevalence of Tobacco Smoking 2000-2025, estimated the prevalence of smoking in adults to be 12.9% in men and 0.6% in women.¹²²

Results from the 2011 Global Youth Tobacco Survey (the most recent available) suggest that amongst young people (13-15 year-olds), 19.3% of young men and 15.8% of young women use tobacco.¹²³

Tobacco in Uganda

Tobacco leaf production in Uganda increased significantly after 2006, when BAT established Uganda as the hub of its Leaf Operations in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA), supplying 20 countries worldwide.¹²⁴ The export of tobacco leaf has since grown significantly, from USD 26,964,000 in 2006 to USD 58,256,000 in 2012, as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.¹²⁵

The number of farmers growing tobacco crop has also risen over the same period. In 2014 BAT Uganda announced it would no longer grow tobacco leaf in Uganda, and Alliance One International (an international tobacco leaf merchant) stated it would take over BAT’s leaf operations.¹²⁶¹²⁷ At the time, BAT was reported in the Ugandan press to be responsible for 70% of Uganda’s tobacco leaf production,¹²⁸ an estimated 75,000 farmers were relying on the crop by 2020.¹²⁹ An estimated 95% of the tobacco leaf produced in the country is exported to Kenya.¹²⁹ (Based on Euromonitor data).

Who Dominates the Market?

In 2019, British American Tobacco Uganda accounted for 51.7% of overall volume sales in the Uganda tobacco cigarette market.¹²⁹

BAT Uganda’s main competitor in the market is Continental Tobacco Uganda (a subsidiary of Kenyan owned Mastermind Tobacco Kenya).¹³⁰

Roadmap to Tobacco Control

Historically there are a number of laws that have regulated aspects of tobacco control in Uganda, namely: The Tobacco (Control and Marketing) Act (1967), Public Health Act (1964), Constitution of the Republic of Uganda (1995), National Environment Act (1996), and the National Environment Regulations (2004).¹³¹

Uganda ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in June 2007.¹³² The regulations listed above did not comply with the FCTC. To safeguard public health and regulate the tobacco industry in Uganda, the Ministry of Health began drafting the country’s first dedicated tobacco control law, the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill (UCTB).

Uganda Tobacco Control Bill

The UTCB (now the Uganda Tobacco Control Act 2015) sought to “regulate the manufacture, sale, labelling, promotion, advertising, distribution, public use of tobacco products, and sponsoring of tobacco products”.¹³³

In March 2014, the Bill was presented for its first reading and was subsequently referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Health for further revisions and consultation.¹³³ In July 2015, 15 months after its first reading and after intense pressure from the tobacco control community to oppose many instances of tobacco industry interference, the Bill was finally presented for its second reading in Parliament by Hon. Rosemary Nyakikongoro.¹³⁴

The UTCB was finally passed in the Ugandan Parliament on its third reading on the 28th July 2015 and signed in to law by President Museveni on the 19 September 2015,¹³⁵ eight years after Uganda ratified the FCTC. The Bill’s provisions for tobacco control were considered to be the strongest in Africa at the time of passage,¹³⁶¹³⁷ and include:

• 100% smoke-free public places;
• pictorial health warnings, covering 65% of the pack to inform the public of the dangers of tobacco;
• tobacco taxes are at a 40% of the retail price ¹³⁸
• prohibiting tobacco industry interference;
• a ban on the sale of cigarettes to and by persons less than 21 years;
• a ban on smoking within a distance of 50 meters of any public place (including shisha, electronic cigarettes and chewing tobacco products);
• ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS);
• requirements that cigarette packs “shall not prominently display” at point-of-sale.¹³⁶

Industry Interference in Tobacco Control

Uganda’s commitment to tobacco control has been met with consistent opposition from the tobacco industry; industry tactics to undermine the Tobacco Control Act have included: “blackmailing” politicians,¹³⁹ employing front groups and third parties to further the industry agenda,¹⁴⁰ violating the FCTC Article 5.3 by directly engaging politicians¹⁴¹ and influencing policymaking through trade committees¹⁴² and farmers organisations.¹⁴³

In November 2016, BAT Uganda launched legal action against the government challenging the Tobacco Control Act of 2015.¹⁴⁴ The petition, submitted to the Constitutional Court in Kampala, asserted that the Tobacco Control Act had the effect of unjustifiably singling out the tobacco industry for discriminatory treatment and contravened Articles 40(2), 26 and 29(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda.¹⁴⁵¹⁴⁶ In May 2019, the Court upheld the 2015 Tobacco Control Act as constitutional, dismissing the petition and rejecting this legal challenge.^144145146 Justice Kenneth Kakuru said in his judgment:

“…legislations like the Tobacco Control Act that seeks to protect the public from the adverse effects of the petitioner’s products (tobacco) cannot be said to be unconstitutional.” ¹⁴⁵

In April 2019, the Ugandan Ministry of Trade passed a draft of proposed tobacco regulations to BATU. This resulted in a letter from British American Tobacco Uganda providing input on the proposed regulations, which generated conflicts of interest and violated the FCTC.¹³⁸

The 2020 Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index by the STOP initiative ranked Uganda as the country with the 3^rd least tobacco industry interference out of the 57 countries surveyed.¹³⁸ However, there is a need to create greater awareness of the provisions of the Tobacco Control Act and inform all departments of the limits it imposes when interacting with the tobacco industry.¹⁴⁷

Extensive research published in 2021 by the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, a partner in STOP, and in conjunction with BBC’s Panorama, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project uncovered multiple instances of British American Tobacco seeking to frustrate tobacco control measures in Africa.

• For more details visit The BAT Files on TobaccoTactics

Tobacco Company CSR during the Covid-19 Pandemic

In December 2020, a joint Ugandan/British public health research project reported that the COVID-19 pandemic has given the tobacco industry an opportunity to participate in public health at national and district levels by donating US $65,000 to the National COVID-19 task force in Uganda.¹⁴⁸ This is part of a wider pattern of tobacco industry corporate social responsibility during the pandemic.

• See this timeline to read more about the nature and frequency of tobacco industry attempts to derail tobacco control in Uganda.

TobaccoTactics Resources

• British American Tobacco Uganda
• Uganda – BAT Marketing Strategies
• Uganda – BAT’s Tactics to Undermine the Tobacco Control Bill
• Uganda – Timeline: Industry Interference with the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill 2014
• Uganda – Infographic on Industry Interference with the Uganda Tobacco Control Bill
• Africa’s Tobacco Epidemic
• A list of TobaccoTactics pages on Africa

References

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