PHM-Exch> [PHM News] Declaration by the Peoples’ Health Movement of Latin America and the Caribbean

[Claudio Schuftan]

*Declaration by the Peoples’ Health Movement of Latin America and the
Caribbean*



We, the participants in the first Latin American Peoples’ Health Assembly,
from 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and 13 in other
regions, gathered in Cuenca, Ecuador on 7-11 October 2013, in an ambience
of fraternity and commitment, to debate our struggle for the right to
health in the midst of the crisis in capitalist civilisation.



A dispute between two major directions for the future of humanity and the
planet marked the context of the Assembly.



On the one hand, the dominant trend in the world is seeking to restore the
model of accumulation in a few hands, with dire social and environmental
costs, further dispossessing people through irrational hyper-consumption,
extractivism and the commoditisation of health, violently imposed while
criminalising social protest and resistance.



On the other hand, there is the emerging trend toward Living Well and
guaranteeing the essential preconditions for health, defending it as a
fundamental human right.



Neoliberal prescriptions cannot stanch this sweeping crisis. Instead, we
must build grassroots and country-level alternatives that tackle the roots
of the capitalist system and its manifestations in the economy and labour,
forced migration, contamination and climate change, ethics and health
services.



Latin America and the Caribbean are contributing concretely to this
emancipatory trend, with its history of resiliency and of fighting for
social justice, with alternatives and ideas that include the furtherance of
indigenous wisdom, which teaches us that we must seek a balance with nature
and live in harmony; with the admirable example of the Cuban people, who
have been dealing with a criminal blockade for over half a century; and in
general, with the extensive solidarity and hope in our region, from which
spring alternative models to rebuild our utopian ideals.



In light of the current discussions over the post-2015 development agenda,
we reaffirm the principles of the Peoples’ Health Movement in the
Declaration of Alma Ata, reclaimed, updated and enriched in our Peoples’
Charter for Health adopted in Bangladesh at our First Peoples’ Health
Assembly in 2000, in the Declaration of Cuenca at the Second PHA in 2005
and in the Cape Town Call to Action at the Third PHA in 2012.



We question the way international agencies are proposing universal health
coverage, centring on basic packages and services limited by ability to
pay. This reduces the problem to one of access to health care services;
although these are of course necessary, they produce inequities if they are
not comprehensive and are also insufficient if they do not address the
social determinants of health that are in the same development model.
Protection of people and of the environment should be at the centre of
public policies and international policy, and we should distance ourselves
from development focused on hyper-consumption and unsustainable, untenable
economic growth.



We demand mechanisms for environmental justice alongside social justice,
including recognition of the ecological debt and the differential liability
of developed countries in climate change and in the many other ways nature
has been harmed.



We question the move by several governments in the region to criminalise
and prosecute the legitimate social mobilisation of the region’s peoples.
We are also against their plans to ramp up extractivist projects.



We make a special call to the government of Ecuador to desist in its plans
to open the Yasuni Amazon reserve to oil drilling and expand the extractive
model, ignoring the cries of Ecuadorans and the other peoples of the world
who are following the path of Sumak Kawsay—Living Well, a movement that
begin in Ecuador itself. We also call on Ecuador to not criminalise the
social protest movement, but instead to devise democratic mechanisms to
deal with the differences between the government and social movements.



Together, we commit ourselves to restoring the health of ecosystems and
combating new threats to commoditise life. With urgency, we express our
opposition to technological solutions that attempt to gloss over social
problems:

·       The use of genetically modified seeds and species, because their
genetic modifications have unpredictable results, they bankrupt peasant
farmers, take over large swaths of land without consulting the people who
live there, and turn communities into laboratories at the service of
transnational corporations that are encroaching on national sovereignty.

·       The production of biofuels that increase pollution in order to
power vehicles while millions starve.

·       Pesticide use by large-scale agribusiness.

·       The focus on surgical and technical procedures that are
palliatives, yet mask the underlying structural causes of disease,
differential exposure and preventable premature death.

·       A pharmaceutical industry that puts profits before human rights,
patents life to appropriate it and is one of the main driving forces of the
medical-industrial complex, which exploits the results of collaborative
research, with the complicity of a large number of universities and
governments.



These so-called solutions are creating more problems than the ones they
claim to fight, upsetting the balance in the ecosystem and causing disease,
death, bacterial resistance and social and health exclusion and inequity.



In response, we call for:

·       A different model of society that rises above capitalism to found a
new, truly human civilisation based on solidarity and harmony with the
environment, conditions for Living Well.

·       The embodiment of sovereignty in health, by building together the
conditions that enable a dignified life for human communities and the
environment in which they live. We want health to be in the hands of
communities and the people, thus reclaiming and appreciating the enormous
wealth of knowledge, practices and experience that the peoples of Latin
America and the Caribbean have in protecting and caring for health.

·       Public, universal, equitable health systems with social justice
that are multicultural and include promotion, prevention, treatment and
supportive care, returning to the original meaning of these terms, which go
beyond lifestyle and refer to the integrality of people and their context.

·       Health worker training institutions that break with the forced
commoditisation of the way they practice and educate from the perspective
of the social determinants of health and inequalities, social
responsibility and direct engagement with their communities.

·       Public policy and governance to lead these necessary changes.

·       Broad social participation based on strengthening social movements
and building alliances that enable communities to seize their rights and
mobilise to develop and defend fair policies that put the right to health
and a balanced ecosystem before the interests of the market, responding to
this historic moment of generalised crisis around us.

·       Research, information and communications systems free from spying,
framed in personal and collective rights, that allow for the flow of ideas
to develop alternatives and make knowledge freely available to society.



We know that the ancient wisdom of Living Well can save the planet. The
emancipatory worldviews of indigenous peoples are being revitalised and
reconstituted and can provide the foundation for the political intentions
of the people, after 521 years of resistance. We are moving towards
peoples’ self-determination and autonomy, and along this path the Peoples’
Health Movement seeks to contribute to building the health sovereignty of
our peoples.



With our alegremia[1] <#_ftn1> high, we call on ourselves to continue along
the road to human emancipation, to build health with dignity for the people
and for our Mother Earth.



Cuenca de Guapondelig

October 2013



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[1] <#_ftnref1>                                 Alegremia: joy + -emia
(blood concentration) = the level of joy in the blood; a social construct,
based on hope, water, food, air, shelter, education, art and love, that
involves a profound social transformation towards a more dignified, freer
and united world.
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