In preparation of People's Health Assembly II - part 3
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The People's Charter for Health
As a result of a full year's mobilization and five days of very
intense and interactive work in Savar, a Global Peoples Health
Charter emerged which was endorsed by all participants (People's
Health Assembly 2000a). This Charter has now become:
* an expression of the Movement's common concerns;
* a vision for a better and healthier world;
* a call for more radical action;
* a tool for advocacy for people's health; and
* a worldwide rallying manifesto for global health movements, as
well as for networking and coalition building.
The significance of this Global People's Charter is multiple:
* it endorses health as a social, economic and political issue
and as a fundamental Human Right;
* it identifies inequality, poverty, exploitation, violence and
injustice as the roots of preventable ill-health;
* it underlines the imperative that 'Health for All' means chal-
lenging powerful economic interests, opposing globalization as
the current iniquitous development model; it thus drastically
changes our political and economic priorities;
* it brings in a new perspective and the voices from the poor
and the marginalized (the rarely heard) encouraging people to
develop their own local solutions; and
* it encourages people to hold accountable their own local au-
thorities, national governments, international organizations and
national and transnational corporations.
The vision and the principles of the Charter, more than any
other document preceding it, extricates health from the myopic
biomedical-techno-managerialist approach it has seen in the last
two decades --with its vertical, selective magic-bullets-
approach to health-- and centers it squarely in the more compre-
hensive context of today's global socioeconomic-political-
cultural-environmental realities. However, the most significant
gain of the People's Health Assembly and the Charter is that --
for the first time since Alma Ata-- a 'Health For All' action-
plan unambiguously endorses a call for action that tackles the
broader determinants of health. These include:
* Health as human right;
* Economic challenges for health;
* Social and political challenges in health;
* Environmental challenges for health;
* Tackling war, violence, conflict and natural disasters;
* Fostering a people-centered health sector; and
* Encouraging people's participation for a healthier world.
(continued)