The McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer recently completed its 6^th Intensive Legal Training Course on law and noncommunicable disease prevention. 18 participants from 14 countries — Brazil, Colombia, The Gambia, Indonesia, Kenya, Kiribati, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, Namibia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Tonga — attended the course, held at Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, Australia from 15 May to 2 June.

We were pleased to also be joined by representatives of the WHO FCTC Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub on Taxation, the Economics of Tobacco Control Project at the University of Cape Town; WHO Headquarters; and the WHO Regional Office for Africa.

The course builds capacity in the use of law to prevent cancer and other NCDs, in the context of ensuring coherence across health, sustainable development, human rights, trade, and investment laws and sectors. It is primarily aimed at government lawyers in low- and middle-income countries. The course covers obligations under and implementation of the WHO FCTC, legal challenges to tobacco control measures under trade, investment, and domestic law, and lessons learned from challenges to Australia and Uruguay’s tobacco packaging and labelling measures, set in the context of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda, the global NCD agenda, and human rights law.

In one of the highlights of the course, representatives from the Australian Department of Health, Attorney-General’s Department, and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shared the Australian Government’s experience and lessons learned through defending international trade and investment challenges to Australia’s tobacco plain packaging legislation.

The course, conducted in collaboration with WHO and the Secretariat to the WHO FCTC as a McCabe Centre Knowledge Hub activity, was primarily supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with additional support for participants received from the American Cancer Society, the William Rudder Memorial Fund, and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

We have now had almost 120 participants from 56 countries over 6 courses since we started running the program in 2014.

For enquiries about the course, please contact the WHO FCTC Secretariat at fctcsecretariat [at]who.int.