The WHO’s War on Stakeholder Dialogue, Part 1:
The WHO’s War on Stakeholder Dialogue, Part 1:
How the WHO defines all industries as “health harming”
In a recent publication, the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe has declared stakeholder dialogue dead. The report, entitled “Commercial determinants of noncommunicable diseases in the WHO European Region”, expanded its definition of health-harming industries (HHIs) from the tobacco industry to include all industries.
The WHO’s position does not mince words: corporations, and their manipulation of decision-making processes, are the main cause of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). The report states: “There is a crucial need to question power asymmetry and the current political economic system as the root causes of ill health.”
The “report aims to catalyze new thinking and action to help ensure health and equity throughout the WHO European Region” by essentially encouraging all governments to break any contact or engagement with (to blacklist) any industries whose products harm the health of individuals (as they have done with the blocking of any contact between policy actors and representatives of the tobacco industry).
This document’s proposal to have WHO Member States exclude any contact with any industry actor could have significant influence on the health policy process, including essentially nullifying the stakeholder dialogue approach that has guided policymaking over the last three decades. It requires a deeper analysis so the Firebreak is producing a five-part assessment.
The first part of the analysis of their report looks at what the WHO considers to be a health-harming industry.
The second part will analyze what their demands to exclude these industries from the stakeholder dialogue and policy process mean.
Part 3 will assess how the WHO diminishes the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility and its role in furthering stakeholder dialogue as merely marketing ploys to maintain power, profits and exploitation.
The fourth section will look at the WHO’s alternative to stakeholder dialogue: empowering civil society organizations to lead policy. It will show how these activist groups are acting more irresponsibly than the worst commercial actors.
The final article, more speculative, will try to understand how seemingly educated people can actually think this way and produce such a ridiculous 156-page report.
What are “Health-Harming Industries”?
The WHO does not clearly define which industries are health harming but they include a wide range. In the Executive Summary, they state: “tobacco, alcohol, food, pharmaceuticals, and the healthcare industry, (they) integrated marketing campaigns to glamourize and normalize the use of harmful products...” They also mention elsewhere that HHIs include fossil-fuel companies, meat producers, soft drink companies, gambling industries, banking and financial institutions, mining firms …
Going further, the WHO report refers to a diversity of HHIs:
“Commercial actors have various sizes as well as a myriad of legal forms, such as franchises, joint ventures, limited liability companies, and corporations, just to name a few.
Commercial actors include manufacturers, retailers, and third parties associated with them, such as trade associations, law firms, public relations firms, consultancies, and other services. The commercial world also relies on researchers, think tanks, medical professional societies, patient organizations, and other groups funded by commercial actors to further their interests, overtly or covertly.”
The contrary is perhaps easier to ask: What commercial actors do the WHO consider not to be health-harming industries? Their report did not mention the automobile industry, but given the number of deaths per year from accidents and their contributions to air pollution and climate change, it would be hard to claim they are not health harming. Chemicals, plastics and crop protection manufacturers would also fall under the fossil fuel industry (although it is curious how the WHO could resist directly slamming the pesticides industry).
Television, film, video games, Internet and social media companies were not stated as HHIs, but the passive lifestyle and addictive practices they promote are serious killers (perhaps more than the tobacco industry if one considers the effect of all of that salty buttered popcorn consumed while lounging). But I understand the logic of the WHO in excluding the media as a health-harming industry. Michael Bloomberg is one of the principle donors to the WHO’s noncommunicable diseases program so the UN would not want to risk losing that honeypot.
In essence, there is only one commercial actor that could legitimately be excluded from the WHO’s list of health-harming industries, and that is the weapons and arms industries. Their products do not lead to any noncommunicable diseases (unless you consider uranium-tipped missiles). And this pretty well sums up the sheer stupidity of the WHO’s little hate and exclusion exercise.
The bottom line is that, according to the WHO, all industries, as commercial actors, are health harming (except weapons and arms manufacturers) and thus need to be excluded from public discourse and policy processes in the same way that the tobacco industry has been ostracized by all WHO signatories. The first chapter of the report puts their cards clearly on the table.
The WHO claims commercial actors are pushing health-harming products on consumers that increase global deaths from noncommunicable diseases. With one paragraph, the WHO has essentially condemned stakeholder dialogue and is attempting to banish Western society’s main employer, innovator and source for development and wellbeing. This is a stunning statement from an UN organization.
Is all industry as evil as the WHO tries to portray? Are all of their products health harming? To put this into context, here is a depiction of how commercial products are “harming” a normal person during a normal day.
A Day in a Life – How Health-Harming Industries are Affecting Me
I wake up after a good night’s sleep on a polyurethane foam mattress (produced by a health-harming industry). I brush my teeth with a plastic toothbrush (produced by a health-harming industry) with anti-bacterial substances in my toothpaste (produced by a health-harming industry). I then shower with hot water warmed to a safe level by natural gas (provided by a health-harming industry). The soap, shampoo and deodorant I use contain chemical substances that protect my skin and promote public hygiene (all produced by health-harming industries).
When I flush my toilet, a disinfectant is dispersed (produced by a health-harming industry). Toilets and sewage systems, by the way, are industrial products so that I do not need to open my window and dump my fecal matter onto the streets below (as was the norm in pre-industrial times when HHIs did not exist and public health disasters were common).
For breakfast, I open a plastic pot of yogurt (processed by a health-harming industry) and pour a low-calorie energy drink (bottled by a health-harming industry). As I am on a diet, I am grateful to have the choice to consume whole grain bread and products with low-calorie sweeteners (produced by health-harming industries). With breakfast, I take my blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering pills that allow me to enjoy a good quality of life and hopefully live long enough to enjoy my grandchildren (produced by a health-harming industry).
I turn on my kettle with electricity provided by a fossil-fuel company (a health-harming industry). I then check the updates on my phone (with Wi-Fi and phone-mast emissions that the WHO has declared as health harming). My phone is made of electronics and polymers that …
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OK, I think you get the point. Almost every moment of every day, most individuals are using products made by what the WHO has defined as health-harming industries that are so threatening to public health that they must be banned from any civil dialogue. But in all of these cases, my health is being protected or promoted by the products they make. That does not matter to the WHO, an organization that seems to be on a post-capitalist, anti-industrial mission.
The WHO report concludes that as these industries are for-profit, they are not acting in the interest of public health and should be excluded from any discussion or decisions regarding their products. The next part of this analysis will look at what this would mean for any policy process and for the protection of public health and safety.
Part 2 will focus on one simple question: Is the WHO acting in the interest of public health?