In so-called ‘neo-liberal’ orthodoxy, certain
inalienable laws govern the give-and-take of
market forces.One dogma of this ideology is that
to interfere with the ‘self-regulation’ of
markets is to court economic suicide.
In that sense, the neo-liberal outlook regards
market forces as being akin to the great force
fields in physics, such as magnetism or
thermodynamics. In other words, like these other
forces, humans must respond according to the
laws of the market or else face annihilation.
The entire edifice of neo-liberal rationality
and certainty is based purely on financial
considerations. This outlook is, for sure, not
new. It has had a number of incarnations since
the early days of history. We now call it
neo-liberalism.
We need good government
In reality, however, to mediate in conflicts
between different interests, and to protect
against human rights violations, it is
government that must play the dominant role.
That is why we invented it! Therefore, such
ideas as markets being allowed to make major
social, political and human rights decisions,
without the mediating influence of the
government as a duty bearer, are simply
nonsense. No wonder democracy is seen as an
obstacle by the proponents of orthodox
neo-liberalism. The
keep-government-out-of-economics argument is
actually a form of red-in-tooth-and-claw social
Darwinism. For neo-liberals, ‘free markets’ are
an article of faith and, in such a naked
struggle, the odds are against the community and
against the upholding of human rights. This
undercuts healthy societies that protect the
weakest of their members as a measure of their
social strength and integrity.
Not to be forgotten is the role trades unions
have played historically as, over time, they
have protected the human rights of workers. We
can thus perhaps consider them the first
organised claim holders. They were also among
the first to consistently confront authorities
in an open way with their demands.
In modern times, more and more, the human
rights-based framework has allowed us to
jump-start work that directly aims at solving
the problems of discrimination and of
marginalization. Coming from a different (or an
added) set of principles and standards.
The death of health
Neo-liberalism has vigorously promoted
mechanisms that remove both wealth and dignity
from the bottom of the social ladder and that
shift wealth to the top. It does so by fostering
unrestrained competition that promotes and
honours inequity of a type that very fast
rewards the successful and crushes the beaten.
Neo-liberalism is a philosophy for the winners,
not for whining losers, we are told. Its
constituency is only the top 10 or 20 per cent
of the income scale. It defines anything
publicly owned, as opposed to privately owned,
as inefficient. It is certainly not the
expression of natural human nature. In the case
of health, it undercuts physical and mental
health, and is ever ready to mortgage it for the
financial advantage of a few.
At the centre of neo-liberalism is the
‘ownership society’ of a type that has
relentlessly emphasised privatisation,
deregulation, disregard for human rights, living
beyond one’s means, and huge tax cuts for the
already wealthy. Moreover, the proponents of the
‘ownership society’ have a messianic enthusiasm
to change the attitudes of those that do not
think like them. The message is: ‘You are on
your own -- your problems are not ours!’ For
many the possession of a credit card just defers
the home economics judgment day for a few
months. The same is true for the printing of
more money by central banks.
Media bread and circuses?
In the ‘ownership society’, the
ever-corporate-compliant media keeps people
entertained, misinformed, only partly informed
and, worse, informed at length and in detail
about trivial events and about ‘lifestyles’ that
require wealth. Institutionalised disinformation
is the modern means of social control. This is
also not new, it goes back to the Roman policy
of bread and circuses for the plebians.
Every now and then somebody, in the press and
elsewhere, keeps calling for ‘market
transparency’. But the transparency they call
for is a myth; it promises a politics-fee
solution within the confines of the system
itself.
It is not enough to have a passion for justice
and for human rights. One has to look straight
in the face of reality and to become acquainted
with the laws and wheels of politics.
Unfortunately, in the ownership society few do
so and, worse, the justice system finds guilty
people where there are only victims (often of
human rights violations, and there is no
punishment for the rich when guilty).
To me, all the above shows that decency rapidly
crumbles when faced with greed. If it is all
about becoming richer, most proponents of the
ownership society will sacrifice their souls…
and certainly human rights.
Historically, it was nothing less than a
wholesale change of long cherished social values
that rendered selfishness intellectually
respectable. As an example, you can take the
acceptance and promotion of a privatisation
ethic in impoverished countries.
| The
Peoples’ Health Movement
|
|
Power from the people |
Now for some good and
hopeful news. I first heard about what was going
to become the People’s Health Movement in late
1998. I definitely thought it was the idea whose
time had come: A growing number of us knew that,
after years of ‘structural adjustment
programmes, there were people out there in the
world that were fed up with the state of affairs
of deteriorating public health services and the
concurrent move towards privatisation of these
services.
Most of us were independent individuals,
academics or grassroots organisations scattered
around the world, that would simply not take
this untenable situation any longer; enough was
enough: We had already been cheated out of the
people’s achievements in the 1978 Alma Ata
Declaration on primary health care.
The first assembly
I was then invited by the eight founding
organisations to join the task force that was to
prepare the background documentation for what
was then a dream: A Peoples Health Assembly
convened as a milestone to mark the millennium.
At that time, the dream was to bring together
all the dispersed and disgruntled sheep into a
flock that would change the world. We all had
read the message on the wall: People struggling
to improve health conditions around the world
demanded solidarity and demanded action.
Poverty, exploitation, violence and injustice
were (and are) at the root of excess ill-health
and deaths of poor and marginalised people, and
our coordinated effort was an imperative.
Our spirits were high, and a burst of enthusiasm
put us to work using the newly discovered power
of the internet as used by civil society.
The Peoples’ Charter
Assignment number 1 was to come up with a
People’s Charter for Health –‘the document of
documents’-- that was to be, and became, the
manifesto to call on all good shepherds to join
together in action, at he same time setting the
bases of what we were all going to be doing,
during and after the Peoples’ Health Assembly.
Millions were suffering from preventable
ill-health, malnutrition and premature deaths.
Corporate-led interests were leading to further
and further declines in health. Powerful
interests had to be challenged; political
priorities had to be drastically changed, we
reckoned.
The challenge was not an easy one to live up to:
We had to put in six pages all our creative
anger about what was wrong with a health care
system in crisis the world over, characterised
by growing inequities within and among
countries, and, at the same time, mark a new
direction to get to where we all thought the
Alma Ata Declaration was supposed to have led us
to in the first place.
A face to face meeting of a task force that I
was part of, met in Dhaka and then in Amsterdam.
We came up with a first draft of the Charter, to
be circulated worldwide for discussion before
delegates arrived at our grand finale, the
Peoples’ Heath Assmebly in Savar, Bangladesh,
beginning in 2000 on 8 December. We thought we
had assembled a rather radical document. But we
were surprised that, during the Assembly --where
1453 persons from 92 countries met-- successive
days of work on the text resulted in what is
today the most quoted political public health
document in the world. now available in 43
languages. (www.phmovement.org)
It took us roughly 20 months to do all the
preparatory work --the fundraising and logistics
of such a huge international meeting not having
been the smallest of challenges. The assembly
was a great success and there were roaring calls
for more. Only then did it dawn on us conveners
that the assembly, a one time event, could and
should become the Peoples’ Health Movement. So
it did, and so it is.
People whose voices had rarely been heard before
had their say. They declared themselves ready to
develop and work for their own solutions. They
also committed to hold to account authorities
that had led us to, and kept us in, the crisis
in public health. This is a crisis of which, as
Association members must know, the crisis in
world nutrition is an important part.
The rest is living history. We are now the
largest coalition of networks of health
activists in the world. Hundreds of
organisations and individuals working in health,
the environment, on livelihood issues, on
sustainable development and human rights are now
part of the Peoples’ Health Movement.
What is it all about?
We have come together to challenge the
prevailing system of health care delivery and
economic development, which fails to serve most
of the poor people in the world.
We target government policies that are driving
the unfair elements of health care worldwide. We
work on issues related to the right to health
care and on health and trade issues. We actively
oppose militarism and war. We see health as a
social, economic and political issue and, above
all, a fundamental United Nations-sanctioned
human right.
Our efforts are directed to equitable
development and equity in health as our top
priorities in local, national and international
policy making. We have adopted comprehensive
primary health care as the strategy to achieve
most of these priorities. We draw on and support
people’s movements in their struggles to build
long-term sustainable solutions to their health
problems. We seek a world where people’s voices
guide the decisions that shape our lives.
Our call to action, now
Our call for health as a human right means that,
in our daily work, we tackle the social,
economic, political and environmental
determinants of health.
We are active in the struggle against war,
violence, conflict and natural disasters given
their catastrophic health consequences. Day in,
day out, we build a people-centered health
sector and foster people’s participation for a
healthier world.
Much has happened in the decade since 2000. We
had a second assembly in Cuenca, Ecuador in
2005. It was as successful as the first assembly
in Savar. The Cuenca Declaration was approved.
This confirmed that our Charter was every bit as
valid five years after its drafting, and updated
it to accommodate what was happening in the
world since 2000.
We have a successful website (www.phmovement.org)
and an active listserver for over 2600
recipients worldwide. We launched a global right
to health and health care campaign, now active
in 16 countries and growing. Peoples’ Health
Movement members had a prominent role in the
preparation of WHO’s Report on the Social
Determinants of Health launched in 2008.
We further decided that we did not see
eye-to-eye with the yearly State of the
World’s Health reports put out by WHO. So
together with others, we launched our own
acclaimed alternative Global Health Watch
of which there are already GHW1 and GHW2 (find
the respective links to them in the PHM website)
and a GHW3 is to be published in 2011. These
show why so little progress is being made in a
vast range of health-related topics, and call a
spade a spade. Next year, 2011, we plan to hold
PHA3 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Visit our website, cited above. Come and join us
in our demand for health for all, now!
Request and acknowledgement
You are invited please to respond, comment,
disagree, as you wish. Please use the response
facility below. You are free to make use of the
material in this column, provided you
acknowledge the Association, and me please, and
cite the Association’s website.
Please cite as: Schuftan C. Decency
crumbles in the face of greed, and other items.
[Column] Website of the World Public Health
Nutrition Association, July 2010. Obtainable at
www.wphna.org
The opinions expressed in all contributions
to the website of the World Public Health
Nutrition Association (the Association)
including its journal World Nutrition, are those
of their authors. They should not be taken to be
the view or policy of the Association, or of any
of its affiliated or associated bodies, unless
this is explicitly stated.
This column is reviewed by Geoffrey Cannon.
cschuftan@phmovement.org
www.phmovement.org
|
