CONFERENCE 2022 RESOLUTIONS
Each of the conference days prepared actions, propositions, key messages and resolutions arising from the day.
These proposals and resolutions have been further refined and integrated for final presentation and discussion on the fourth day.
We provide here the compiled RESOLUTIONS FOR CATALYSING CHANGE FOR EQUITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN HEALTH adopted on the final day on November 17th. (WE will still implement a final copy edit but not change text content!)
Delegates at the EQUINET Conference 2022 comprised representatives of civil society organisations, community members, parliament, central and local government leaders and officials, trade unions, media, academia, researchers, and personnel from regional and international organisations. We came together virtually under the umbrella of the Regional Network for Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa (EQUINET) to deliberate the actions needed to Catalyse change for health and social justice in this region. Our deliberations took place at a time of deep-seated and multiple crises that have decimated the basic foundations for provision of public goods (the state, resources and collective agency) in our region, with the poor and marginalised communities left behind to shoulder the burden.
We:
- Are alarmed by the: deepening resource extraction from our region that harms our environment and depletes resources for current and future generations; inequalities in health, wellbeing and access to services, especially in urban areas and with particular consequences for young people, that are exacerbated by harmful commercial practices; underfunding, privatisation and commodification of public sector services; local to global political and economic systems that promote profit over people, disempower people and disrupt collective agency, dignity and social solidarity.
- Are greatly concerned with the limit and slow pace of action to address these challenges and make the change needed to promote equity in health and wellbeing at local, national and regional levels.
- Recognise that public sector-led health systems and comprehensive primary health care are central elements of the robust, redistributive and participatory states that are essential to meet our challenges, including from pandemic, conflict and climate injustice and address global drivers of injustice and inequity.
- Unequivocally identify the pivotal contribution that human rights, solidarity values, collective organisation and social power make in supporting self-determined action towards social, economic and ecological justice.
Committing to reclaim our resources, our states and our collective agency and solidarity for health and social justice, and as a catalyst for a political economy and systems that are rooted in values of equity, social justice, collective wellbeing and protection of nature, we propose a set of inter-linked areas of action to address our most critical challenges and tap our assets for health.
Building on our past 25 years, we understand that equity demands sustained, longer-term action. Over the next five years, we will:
Take action to:
- Build and amplify a clear and affirmative pro-equity, pro-public discourse to affirm values, claim rights, resist inequity and demand action.
- Track, generate evidence and knowledge on inequities and rights violations in health and wellbeing, and on the opportunities for and feasibility of social justice change that promotes both sustained human and ecosystem wellbeing.
- Promote, demonstrate, advocate for and contribute to the implementation of specific equity-promoting laws, policies, practices and reforms for equity in health and wellbeing.
- Build the capacities, leadership and activism needed to promote active participation, communities as agents of change and engage in participatory democracy around the policies, laws and systems that are critical in catalysing equity-oriented change.
- Develop, sustain and work with pro-equity networks and alliances for action within and across countries in the east and southern Africa (ESA) region, in exchanges and engagement with other regions, with global actors and in global processes.
With a particular focus on the following issues:
- Development and implementation of constitutional and legal provisions that protect the right to health and enable action on equity in health and wellbeing.
- Healthy living, working and ecological conditions and food sovereignty, including specific concern on the extractive sectors, corporate practices, climate and eco-social justice, and for youth health and urban wellbeing.
- Adequate and progressive public sector resourcing (financial, health worker, commodities, infrastructures) and fair allocation for comprehensive primary health care oriented, universal, equitable, socially accountable public sector health, social and essential services, including in pandemics, and on disaggregated and publicly accessible information, monitoring and public health surveillance systems that integrate community evidence.
- Investment in local production of essential health products and tax justice, and the rule systems, measures and institutional reforms for this within the region and at global level.
- Regional counterproposals to paradigms, narratives, and local to global economic, political and procedural drivers of policies and practices that harm equity health and wellbeing and participatory democracy in health systems and services.
More specifically, we will take the actions below for these key areas of focus: 1. To build and amplify a clear pro-equity, pro-public discourse to affirm values, claim rights, resist inequity and demand action,
2. In tracking and generating evidence and knowledge on inequities and rights violations in health and wellbeing, and on the opportunities for and feasibility of social justice change that promotes both sustained human and ecosystem wellbeing. We will expose harms, inequities, rights violations and health and disease consequences in current experience, and future wellbeing risks, including:
We will expose which communities and population groups in our region and in our countries bear the consequences of deficits in policies, laws and resources that impact on healthy living conditions – with particular concern for the deficits in, and drivers of health and wellbeing in youth, migrant and cross-border populations and marginalized communities. We will update and implement participatory and inclusive equity watches from local to regional level and use them to engage locally, nationally, within the region and globally.
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