 Thank you very much for giving me the floor and I'm sorry to take from Professor Negri's very interesting discussion on COVID-19 and those of you who may have dialed in to follow discussions on global health may be disappointed but I give you two reasons to keep following and the first one is that the WHO is actually a small world and at least my work on the WHO has allowed me to understand many things also about the COVID-19 epidemic because at least in my work the WHO really has a type of you know met working method, type of mentality that replicates in all areas of work and the second one is that although non-communicable diseases which are often called silent pandemics although obviously they also cause a lot of deaths but what is even more important is that even in the case of a pandemic such as the one we are witnessing actually non-communicable diseases are an increased risk factor and that's quite evident what it's not we don't have complete studies yet but this year has seemed to emerge with if you look at the newspapers the reports that there is a much higher percentage of people from minorities these advantage populations that are affected by the virus. That being said now I'll go into my my presentation on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. So sorry I'm very sorry so just three parts first I want to introduce you a bit to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Second I want to I will explain a bit what is the first part of my research on my thesis about how the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has been built through what I call strategy and evidence and then in the third part and concluding part I will discuss how then this strategy and evidence has played out in the second in the new life of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which is the life has taken place since the convention entered into force. So very briefly the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is actually called the first street negotiated and adopted under article 19 of the WHO constitution and as many of you may have realized now also from professor's negative presentation the WHO is usually reluctant to adopt legal instruments especially hard low legal instruments so that's actually was actually quite a remarkable event in the life for you amazing just just another treaty but it was actually a very remarkable important event in the history of the WHO and the the FCC establishes very basically some common obligations for parties to the tobacco control measures and it is what I'm what I shown you here very simplistic terms of passing from the picture you can see in your left to the one to the your right so we have passed actually if you reflect upon this you have ever done it we have passed in a few decades from having you know advertisement that actively promoted smoking to now having plain packaging and you know these very horrible pictures on cigarette packages I've actually chosen one that is not too horrible but I'm sure all of you the very horrible ones that are around and this is all part of course it will be simplistic to say there's only due to the framework convention tobacco control but the framework convention tobacco control has been part has been an important part of this change I think it's also very important for the purpose of what I'm going to analyze today to discuss a bit the historical background of the FCC so the FCC was negotiated in an important historical moment of open war to the tobacco industry like the some the so-called cigarette papers had just been discovered in which all the lies and all the misfacts of the tobacco industry have been unveiled and so there was there was a clear historical moment in which states felt you know they could go against the interests of the tobacco industry it's also very important and this is again another common characteristic of the WHO that the treaty has been very much pushed yes by civil society but by a civil society that at least I find in my thesis is very much medical in nature so not only doctors but also generally healthcare workers so people with a centipede background and this already I think can start giving you an impression why science was so important in the treaty but then obviously also like the science is only part of course it was also possible by the strong commitment of the WHO segregated general Dr. Bluntland. So now we go a bit into the history and what would I call this strategy on evidence so I doubt this strategy and evidence because in trying to understand how this treaty was built I found that actually many of course not all but many of the framing and advocacy strategies put in place by the advocates that I refer to as a tobacco control network were actually very much based on evidence so these people were using evidence to push for stronger and stricter tobacco measures to be embedded in the text and I have many species by Dr. Bluntland but also by other people which say we have the evidence this is proved by evidence of course you know we we have to do it because it is proved that by evidence and of course this was possible because by the time just as a reminder we are now around the year 2000 of course there was like very solid body of evidence not only on the risks caused by tobacco smoking but also on how like tobacco tobacco control could be done so all these advertising bans and advertisement health health warnings that you have seen at the very beginning and of course why also why strategy on evidence was important because it was exactly one of the grounds on which the tobacco industry had played so one of the very long-standing tactics of the tobacco industry have been to pay scientists you know to try to always say that there was not enough evidence to try to to hire up the threshold for the good evidence and this has also get very this is a very nice book merchants of doubt that has been very widely documented not no speculations but actually all documents that prove this and so just you know very briefly what I show also my thesis how this strategy on evidence was used for first of all they mobilized evidence so the WHO had accumulated a very solid body of evidence but also they started cooperating with other actors and one of the most important actors in this respect was certainly the war bank which was kind of asked by the WHO the nature of this relationship is a bit unclear but they were kind of asked to publish a report in which they proved how that we with economic methods how tobacco control will work and will make countries richer in the long term and also there were also a lot of other strategies like for example I spend a lot of time in my thesis talking about why this frame of convention is called an evidence-based treaty which I think was also part of all these framing strategies and the strategy on evidence more generally now I go on to the third part of my presentation so what happened after the treaty was concluded because the treaty was concluded in 2003 entered into force in 2005 but it was supposed to be I call it even a regime but in any case it's a kind of it was modeled after many environmental agreements many people are familiar with so it has a secretariat and it has a COP a conference of the parties that meets every two years and it was so supposed to keep the treaty alive it's not a treaty that you know you conclude the text and you put it aside but it's a treaty where you want countries to keep discussing and to keep negotiating and to keep advancing in a way so what has happened after the treaty entered into force the countries have very much continued to discuss but what I found is that at least in the about first 10 years of the end since the FCTC entered into force much of the energies of the FCTC parties and I know the secretariat as well because there is also secretariat has been developed to develop some evidence-based guidelines for the implementation of the FCTC so to provide the idea was to provide evidence-based guidance so whereas the text can tell you like you should add health warnings at least I think it is at least 30 percent in the text of the treaty then the guidelines go into depth explaining how they should be done how the how the these texts should be added you know even the font and sometimes they can become quite detailed like they provide some kind of tech even technical guidance you would call it to a certain extent but the problem that has her roles in this in this context and then there are highlighting my thesis that this way of acting of the of the whole tobacco control network which can encompass not only civil society but also to a certain extent of secretariat of the FCTC so all this insisting on the evidence-based we have to do what is evidence-based provide evidence-based guidance and I'm sure if you have connected to a few of the WHO press conferences they have held these these days on COVID-19 you also hear continuously these evidence-based language and so if you so what I found in in my thesis is that whereas this this strategy on evidence has worked very well for concluding the treaties relatively well then of course you know we could open up for discussion but has worked relatively well for helping countries concluding the treaties actually in the long terms he has also started having some negative consequences most importantly I'm sure you've all heard that there have been some new products developed so like e-cigarettes, vaping products and even icos which is not properly any cigarettes because he actually contains tobacco and these new products have actually started causing a lot of doubts that have divided in a way the scientific community this time in communities it's called and people are very much divided whether you know the risks that they pose are more or less so than the risks that they could help address so whether you know like yes we could we could encourage vaping but the problem is that vaping still poses some risks so is it worth to have the risk of having new people vaping when in fact do I to just lower the risks of those who smoke traditional cigarettes and have them switch to vaping so this is a bit you know in a very very very very in a nutshell the debate that is going on and it's the problem is that what I've found is that lacking totally any kind of evidence on what are the long term long term effects the public health community including the NGOs and to a certain extent you can see even the secretariat is completely that it is not able to provide guidance to state so whenever you ask about why don't you have taken any more courageous decisions about these products the typical answer is like oh we don't have the evidence and so this has actually made the cop rich and unpassed and whereas you know so why I'm saying this and I just really go to the conclusions is that of course evidence can be a powerful tool to support a negotiation but he also had can I have we should be we should be very careful not to overlay it and iron evidence and what is really important to highlight here is that whereas this may seem obvious for example of people who do international environmental law because that has been because for a long time in the field the problem has always been that there was no so they have developed other principles like the proportionary principles in other ways so of course in other fields they may seem very obvious but the problem is that in an institution like the WHO and the FCTC which is still at least physically part of the WHO this is totally new they're really not able to deal with with situations of uncertainty and of course this causes some problems and I'll stay here I conclude on tobacco but I think it's also impacting the COVID-19 and thank you all very much for the attention