PHA-Exchange> PHM acceptance speech as we received the AIFO award

[Aviva]

Raoul Follereau Award for Safeguarding Human Rights
(AIFO Conference)

PHM Acceptance Speech


Sisters and Brothers of the Raoul Follereau family / members of AIFO 
and PHM Italy, special invitees and dignitaries / fellow 
pilgrims ‘building the civilization of Love’ through people’s movements 
and campaigns everywhere. 

1.	I bring you greetings from all the members of the Global 
People’s Health Movement and a very special thanks for the great honour 
you have bestowed on the PHM by giving us the Raoul Follereau Award for 
safeguarding of Human Rights in Health. 

2.	By giving us this award you have honored not just the three of 
us who have come from the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, 
representing the movement but also hundreds of fellow members of the 
global PHM who have spent the last few decades working hard to build : 

This is our vision and our commitment. 

3.	This vision and commitment evolved at the First Global People’s 
Health Assembly in December 2000, when 1454 people from over 75 
countries of the world spent 5 days together reflecting on the unmet 
challenge of Health for All and evolved the People’s Charter for Health 
which outlines the vision, the principles and the calls for action of 
PHM. 

SORRY, PARAGRAPHS 4 AND 5 ARE CORRUPTED IN THE ORIGINAL (Claudio)

6.	The People’s Charter for Health, which has now become the 
manifesto of the movement and has been translated into over 40 
languages of the world endorses certain basic principles. 


7.	To combat this global health crisis, that we see all around us 
today, all of us individually and collectively need to take action at 
all levels

-	individual
-	community
-	national
-	regional
-	global 


8.	In the context of the Health as a Human Rights issue for which 
PHM has been specially given this award, we request you all to join us 
in our efforts. 

9.	In the context of Asia – which I also represent today, there 
are some special challenges which we need to keep in mind.


Some Feel we are a Continent of Despair:

•	Our continent has the largest number of unhealthy and 
illiterate people in 2000 AD, who need Primary Health Care and Primary 
education.

•	Our continent has several examples of development strategies 
that are displacing people from their traditional access to their own 
land, water, culture and forest resources and making them displaced 
migrants in their own countries (internal refugees).

•	Our continent has several flash points of war, ethnic and 
communal conflict and its own share of natural and man-made disasters.

•	Our continent has several examples of national and development 
strategies that are encouraged not by people’s needs or capacities, but 
by the international exploitative market economies.

However we are also the Continent of Hope

•	Our continent has several examples of common illiterate people –
 predominantly, women who have collectively opposed the present 
development strategies and evolved new ones!

•	Our continent has several examples of people’s campaigns, 
struggles and movements that are not only countering neo-liberal 
economic policies, but evolving through networking grassroots action 
and policy strategies, a new vision that show that another Asia is 
Possible!

•	Our continent has thrown up a series of inspiring community and 
people’s based leaders – who have shown the inspiration for a new 
people oriented politics and a new vocational commitment to work for 
new forms of sustainable development.

•	Our continent has also shown that we have country, state and 
district level leadership that are responsive to people’s genuine needs 
and aspiration and are willing to rethink and reformulate, policies 
that are more ethical and socially relevant and they are also willing 
to collectively organize at Global level efforts to counter 
international monopolies of any sort.

•	We are, therefore, the world’s largest continent – helping to 
build the world of the future – Challenging despair – Building Hope.

10.	Finally, I would like to end my award acceptance speech by 
quoting Raoul Follereau whose many sayings and writings are resonant of 
our movement’s concerns and understanding of the health of the world 
and the current challenges.  I feel, had he been alive and with us in 
2003, he probably would have been an active member and leader of the 
Movement.  I am amazed at his vision, foresight, prophetic insights, 
but most of all his practical realism. 

As a tribute to him, I wish to recall the following important 
initiatives in his life and the following exhortations:

•	Firstly his path breaking efforts to free leprosy affected 
people from stigma and his promotion that poverty, injustice and 
indifference are the underlying cause of the disease. 
•	Secondly his interesting campaigns 

	the hour for the poor;
	one day of war for works of peace;
	the campaign to love each or to disappear – Atom bomb or 
charity.
	letters to Presidents of Russia and USA to donate cost of one 
bomber to treat the leprosy patients of the world; 
	his proposal in 1962 to all heads of state to give 100 Francs 
out of each million Francs used for defense budget – which would cure 
all the leprosy patients of the world. 
	His text for the universal declaration of the Rights of the 
leprosy affected person to the United Nation. 

Before my colleagues share their messages from Africa and Latin 
America, I wish to end this acceptance speech by quoting a moving poem 
from his book of Love. 

11.	A message to the youth of the world 

“If you are in want of food, don’t say “I am hungry”.  But think of the 
400 million young people that will not eat today.  For one half of the 
youth in the world are starving. 

If you have got a cold, don’t say “how sick I am!”.  But think of those 
that are ailing, the 800 million human beings that have never seen a 
doctor. 
It’s not a matter of vaguely wiping a tear.  It is done too soon. 
Nor even of feeling pity for a moment: 
It is too easy. 
It is a matter of being aware 
and no longer accepting; 
no longer being satisfied with turning round oneself – and one’s 
people – waiting for one’s little share of Paradise; 
refusing a little well-meaning nap, when all scream desperately about 
us; 
no longer accepting that sort of existence which is a constant 
resignation of man… 
no longer accepting to be happy alone. 
In front of misery, injustice, cowardice, 
never renounce, never compound, never 
yield. Struggle, fight!”

May his spirit and this award which you all have bestowed on us today 
help the PHM to strive to struggle and to fight – never renouncing, 
never compounding, never yielding. 

Thank you. 

Ravi Narayan
Coordinator
PHM Secretariat (Global)
Bangalore
INDIA.