The Cuenca Declaration

THE CUENCA DECLARATION

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Promote health in an intercultural context

PHM recognises that interculturality is a fundamental element to promote social equity and build a fair health system. Equity in access to health information is a fundamental human right. It is essential in the struggle for indigenous people's health.  People’s knowledge should be incorporated into the development of culturally based equitable health services; culturally sensitive prevention programs; the training of health workers in intercultural skills; achieving fair conditions of work; food security; and a healthy ecosystem.

PHM will incorporate key issues such as the struggle against trade agreements, land reform and indigenous people’s land restoration, protection against piracy of traditional knowledge as a fundamental defence of social security, cultural identity and nutritional security. The many useful aspects of traditional medicine and culture must be valued and included as part of a people-oriented society and health system.

Advance the right to health for all in the context of gender and personal diversity

The health of women, men and people of diverse sexual orientation is severely damaged by the dominance of a patriarchal culture with social and gender inequities and discrimination that affects their integrity. The social, health, sexual and reproductive rights of women are often denied.

• PHM commits to mainstreaming gender and feminist perspectives in all its work and action plans.
• Men and women of PHM commit themselves to deconstruct patriarchal relations in private and public life.
• This Assembly demands the dismantling of neoliberal policies that have increased gender inequality.  To do so it will support international, regional and local campaigns for sexual and reproductive rights; strengthen communication and work relations with networks and other movements; and work to ensure safe abortion for all women and girls.
• PHM firmly denounces all forms of violence including that against women, such as femicide, and demands government action to prevent it, to prosecute perpetrators and to provide all necessary support for people affected by violence.
• People with disabilities and older people should be treated with respect and their right to appropriate health care should be ensured. PHM supports a new UN convention protecting and promoting the rights of persons with disabilities, promotes rehabilitation services as part of PHC, and urges the Commission on Social Determinants of Health to develop more focus on people with disabilities.
• PHM argues for the inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of life, and recommends that disability be addressed in a similar way as gender among donor agencies so that inclusive development is ensured.

Protect the right to health in the context of environmental degradation

• PHM calls upon the people of the world to support action to end imperialist control of the earth’s natural resources and create and maintain a healthy environment for all. Natural resources essential to health are global commons.
• We call for a worldwide campaign for a UN Treaty on the Right to Water, ensuring that commodification and privatization of this vital resource – life itself – is both reversed and prevented. Guided by evidence of devastating damage and by the precautionary principle, we demand a moratorium on extractive mining and petroleum exploration/extraction, a ban on patenting of life forms and processes, research on nanotechnology, release into the environment of GMOs, and on development and use of all biochemical weapons. Governments are accountable to people not transnational corporations and must guarantee rights relating to health and the environment through enforceable laws and regulations. Governments, IFIs and the WHO must cease to be accomplices to TNCs and imperialism. Dow, Monsanto and other companies must be forced to provide reparations to the thousands of uncompensated victims of disasters such as Bhopal and Agent Orange.
• Knowledge and science must be reclaimed for the public good and freed from corporate control. 

Ensure workers’ health and safety by defending and extending existing rights

• PHM calls upon the people of the world to demand the implementation of international treaties that protect workers’ health and safety, recognize workers' health as a universal human right and a responsibility of the state, involve workers in the decision and policy-making process on working and health conditions and ban child labour.
• We support social arrangements to ensure the right to regular, meaningful and adequately remunerated work, with equal pay for equal work for men and women; protection of historical achievements attained by trade unions in the formal sector, renewal and strengthening of trade union, workers’ and anti-globalization movements and their links to other movements; protection of the health of informal sector workers and migrants as they are more exposed to occupational health hazards; and universal health coverage through national health systems and insurance.

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