The eighth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP8) was held on October 1-6 in Switzerland’s Geneva where member parties appointed Iran as the head of COP9, which is going to be held in October 2020, in the Hague, the Netherlands.
WHO FCTC was first adopted in May 2003 at the 56th World Health Assembly in Geneva. Coming into force in February 2005, the treaty had been signed by 168 countries and is legally binding in 181 ratifying countries.
The FCTC is a transnational agreement seeking "to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke" by enacting a set of universal standards stating the dangers of tobacco and limiting its use in all forms worldwide.
Its provisions include rules that govern the production, sale, distribution, advertisement, and taxation of tobacco. FCTC standards are, however, minimum requirements, and signatories are encouraged to be even more stringent in regulating tobacco than the treaty requires them to be.
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