Cape Town Call to Action
*CLICK HERE<http://www.phmovement.org/sites/www.phmovement.org/files/Call%20to%20Action%20FINAL_0.pdf> for the full version of the CAPE TOWN CALL TO ACTION - Please spread wide and far!*
Excerpts:
We reaffirm our commitment to the People’s Charter for Health and to the Cuenca Declaration, which are the foundational documents to this Call to Action.
This Call to Action will guide our work until the Fourth People’s Health Assembly.
Our health has been devastated by neoliberal policies that are the hallmark of present day capitalism. The global health crisis is a consequence of the failure to address the social, political and environmental determination of health. The current capitalist crisis has several inter-related dimensions, among them: political, food, economic, financial and ecological. Its roots lie in the neoliberal model of globalisation.
The response of national and international institutions, to the current financial crisis, has been merely to ‘restore the confidence’ of the same institutions and financial markets that caused the crisis in the first place. Governments have enacted an ‘austerity agenda’ – cutting health and social spending - effectively deepening and reinforcing the very neoliberal economic model the crisis had so discredited, and handing even more power to finance capital.
There is a need to redesign our political culture and our institutions, both nationally and globally; to create relations based on solidarity; and to put in place the mechanisms of accountability needed to run the global political, economic and social structures in a manner that is just, equitable and sustainable.
*Our Alternate Vision:*
- • A reformed economic system that values every individual, not every dollar;
- • Just, fair and democratic political and economic processes and institutions;
- • Better and transformed global heath governance that is free from corporate influence and the influence of unaccountable private actors;
- • Equitable Public Health Systems that are universal, integrated and comprehensive, as well as provide a platform for appropriate action on social determination of health.
*What is to be Done:*
No change will happen without the mobilization of the people through the building of social and political power amongst people and communities. We commit ourselves to building alliances with others who seek progressive and transformative change.
We leave Cape Town determined to:
- • set up new PHM circles
- • energise, broaden and deepen the work of existing PHM country circles
- • strengthen and develop the thematic circles of the PHM.
We leave Cape Town committed to:
- creating and communicating alternative visions, analyses, discourses and evidence;
- actively support and facilitate a range of campaigns.
We will continue and expand our global work around existing global programmes – suitably redesigned wherever necessary, namely:
- the Right to health campaign;
- the International Peoples Health University;
- the Global Health Watch;
- the Democratising Global Health; WHO Watch and Supporting the Restitution of the WHO.
We further commit ourselves to expand our global Right to Health campaign, a campaign that will be globally co-ordinated, but locally owned and driven.
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Global Secretariat
People's Health Movement (PHM)
Email: globalsecretariat@phmovement.org
Web: www.phmovement.org