A few weeks before the 156th Session of the WHO Executive Board, a series of public briefings and policy debates organized by the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) aims to provide spaces for sharing, assessing and debating health policy and governance challenges within and beyond the items covered by the formal agenda of WHO EB, bridging from health policies to people’s realities, addressing determinants of health and promoting democratic governance.
For more information on the G2H2 Policy Debates and the other sessions organized, click here.
At the end of 2023, the European Commission decided to greenlight 10 more years of glyphosate use, the most heavily EC decision turns into a disaster for health, biodiversity, soil and water, as proven by several independent scientific studies. The toxic deliberation to extend glyphosate authorization clashes against the 2015 IARC/WHO statement about the “convincing evidence” that glyphosate can cause cancer in laboratory animals, and that the substance is “probably carcinogenic”. It is also a violation of the EU Pesticide Law, which imposes the adoption of the precautionary principle in case of scientific doubts. The Pesticide Action Network (PAN Europe) took formal procedural steps for a review of the EC decision in January 2024, but these were rejected, and that is why the network has decided on 11th December 2024 to fight this decision at the EU Court of Justice.
"What we've seen is that the EU's scientific agencies and policymakers are bending the rules to claim that glyphosate is safe. Numerous scientific studies, including those from the industry itself, clearly link glyphosate to serious adverse effects such as cancer and potentially neurological diseases," says Dr. Angeliki Lysimachou, Head of Science and Policy at PAN Europe.
Glyphosate is the top selling herbicide and the flagship of chemical agriculture. Already Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, has had to settle 100,000 Roundup cancer lawsuits in past years, paying out as much as USD 11 billions to cancer survivors (as of May 2022), and 30,000 more are pending. The PAN litigation will be a tough court case, the stakes are high. Bayer Monsanto and other producers might join the side of the European Commission in this court case. They have done this before. This means that PAN lawyers will have to face a battery of well prepared and extremely corporate well-funded opponents.
The EC decision bypassed recent scientific evidence, favouring a new round of hazards on human health. Moreover, the role of glyphosate in the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has scientifically come to the fore. Despite AMR being a silent pandemic increasingly profiled in the global health agenda, there remains a dramatically low number of publications linking glyphosate use and the rise of AMR. The herbicide was registered as an antibiotic in the USA in 2003, and in Europe in 2014. The relevance of the PAN court case needs to be examined in this scenario and in the context of what countries like Mexico have been doing to phase out of glyphosate to limit AMR spread.
SID webinar intends to shine a light on this case, in the context of the WHO debates on the pandemic treaty, One Health and the fight against AMR, taking stock of the research work conducted in this area in past years.
Moderators: Nicoletta Dentico, SID and Cecilia Elizondo, ECOSUR
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) possibly represents the greatest global crisis in public health today, and yet - as we shall try to illustrate - the phenomenon stretches well beyond the health domain.
In this session, the Society for International Development SID will launch the latest publication of its flagship’s Journal “Development” and initiate a prolific dialogue on the concept of One Health that takes into consideration selected regional experiences, ancestral knowledge and alternative points of view.
The article explores the catastrophic impact of ongoing wars (in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine...), highlighting their role in exacerbating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through human and environmental destruction and the collapse of health infrastructure.
The Society for International Development, in partnership of the Heinrich Boll Foundation and Strathmore Energy Research Centre, invites the public to register and the attend the upcoming hybrid Public Energy Futures Forum, under the theme, 'Nuclear Power Development in Kenya – A Low Carbon Solution or a High-Risk Gamble?' On Tuesday 3, December 2024, 1400 to 1700hrs (EAT Nairobi) at Daystar University, Nairobi Campus.
Join the conversations and insights from the panel of speakers at the continental agency level as we review negotiations of the Pact for the Future and map how those align with the aspirations of the AU Agenda 2063; and contribute to our mapping of what Africa’s future might look like post-Summit of the Future.
On Wednesday 21 August 2024 the Society for International Development (SID), in partnership with Heinrich Boll Foundation, through the Sustainable Energy Futures Project (SEF) hold a virtual Public Energy Futures Forum under the theme: Unpacking Clean Cooking Developments in Kenya - Challenges and opportunities.
On Monday 22 July 2024, SID, in partnership with Heinrich Boll Foundation, hosted the Sustainable Energy Futures Project public virtual workshop under the theme ‘Energy Policy & Dilemmas of a Just Transition'.
