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NIGH Global Campaign for a Healthy World
If you want to take action globally, as well as locally, to bring about a healthy world community, consider joining in the global campaign to convince national and world leaders that health should have the top place on their agenda.
In the weeks and months ahead, you will have the opportunity to actively participate — with NIGH and its growing worldwide team — in collaboration to strengthen this catalytic call to achieve a healthy world by 2020.
A global strategy with many local and national initiatives is already underway.
A broader definition of "Health" is becoming a converging force of many streams of human endeavor. This provides an opportunity for multi-disciplinary collaboration on a global scale — at individual, local, national and international levels.
2009 — A United Nations ECOSOC Year for Global Health
2009 has become a major year — for all nations — to focus on global health. 2009 is the first time in 60 years that the entire UN family of Agencies and Organizations — as well as Ministers and Delegations from all UN Members States — have met specifically to implement “internationally-agreed goals and commitments in regard to global public health.” This effort was focused through the UN Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC], particularly with in-depth, worldwide discussions and reports prepared for the July gathering of the Council's “High Level Segment”.
So far, the most important outcome of this global effort is the unanimous 2009 ECOSOC Ministerial Declaration. The details proposed within this comprehensive document represent numerous ways in which a healthy world can actually be achieved. [http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/4489923.html]
If this Ministerial Declaration can now be supported — at the 2009 UN General Assembly and beyond, with further commitments for action by all UN Member States — it will have far-reaching implications for health conditions worldwide. Although the current UN General Assembly is focused on many topics such as conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, nuclear threats and climate change — the ‘Global Health’ theme remains a strategic underlying issue for this Assembly.
Overarching UN Resolution Proposal Emerges
Through active involvement in the UN ECOSOC process throughout 2009. [link to "Following NIGH's Journey to Propose UN Resolutions in 2009”] NIGH's team has evolved a catalytic approach for widely supporting this Ministerial Declaration across the world, specifically within the 2009 United Nations General Assembly.
For this, NIGH has proposed an overarching UN Resolution draft entitled: “Mobilizing Public Opinion for the Health of Nations — Healthy People on a Healthy Planet by 2020.” This is currently available for download in English,
French,
Portuguese,
Bulgarian.
This proposed Resolution has recently received wide support, in New York City, from a broad, worldwide network of civil society groups affiliated with the United Nations [http://www.nightingaledeclaration.net/news/un-congo-health/] as well as from nursing leaders meeting in New York City in October.
Its text has been crafted to:
- encourage a widespread "Public Awareness" campaign to let the world know about the goals and commitments of this Ministerial Declaration to improve the health of all humanity.
- recognize the historic contributions that many many people and disciplines have made to our current state of health, worldwide.
- acknowledge (in paragraph # 30) all the nurses of the world as we celebrate our 2010 International Year of the Nurse, focused on advocating for the achievement of all eight UN MDGs.
- address the need (in paragraph # 31) to develop a more formal global plan of action — 2011-2020 — for "healthy people on a healthy planet by 2020."
Gaining Strength — Moving Forward — the 2010 International Year of the Nurse
As this UN Resolution proposal gathers momentum, you will be welcomed to participate by bringing your voice to this effort. Please watch this site regularly for developments.
Meanwhile, our related project — the launch of the 2010 International Year of the Nurse — is daily gathering in strength.
The 2010 International Year of the Nurse is dedicated to encouraging nurses — worldwide — to bring their voices in support of world health, and particularly in support of all eight UN Millennium Development Goals. MD Goals 4, 5 & 6 are directly related to health. MD Goals 1, 2, 3, 7 & 8 are health determinants.
Please visit www.2010IYNurse.net often to learn how you can participate and to watch how others are also seeking to collaborate with you, from around the world.
In Keeping With NIGH's Original Mandate
Since its founding in 2004, NIGH has held two original mandates:
- to increase public awareness about the priority of health for all humanity
- to empower nurses and concerned citizens to stand for a healthy world everywhere.
To accomplish these mandates, the founding NIGH team aimed at three goals:
- Worldwide participation of commitment to the Nightingale Declaration Campaign for a Healthy World [link to Declaration]
- 2010 International Year of the Nurse / Centennial of Florence Nightingale [1820-1910] [http://www.2010IYNurse.net] with UN recognition for this Year
- Catalyze a global action plan to achieve a healthy world by 2020 with UN recognition for this Decade
[Following NIGH's Journey to Propose UN Resolutions in 2009]
In keeping with these goals, NIGH's teams accomplished numerous preliminary discussions and meetings — throughout 2003 to 2008. This included travel to Austria, China, Czech Repubic, Denmark, France, Finland, India, Japan, Norway, Qatar, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Venezuela and Zambia, across the United States and Canada.
As well, NIGH teams traveled several times to the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva and New York and to meetings of the UN Economic and Social Council, the World Health Organization [WHO], the International Labour Organization [ILO] and many health-related NGOs based in Geneva. [Following NIGH's Journey to Propose UN Resolutions in 2009]
As a result of this work, NIGH received its United Nations DPI Status in June, 2009. DPI Status is a special designation for NGOs — civil society working on global issues — to collaborate with the United Nations in keeping the worldwide public informed and empowering the people of global civil society to participate with the UN in doing so.
All of these achievements further focused NIGH's ECOSOC participation, throughout 2009, including in-depth discussions with diplomatic representatives from UN Missions in Geneva and New York. As a result, NIGH's UN liaison team — Dr. Deva-Marie Beck, Dr. Barbara Dossey, Wayne Kines and Cyril Ritchie — has incorporated original language from NIGH's 2004 UN Resolution proposals into the new overarching UN proposal: "Mobilizing Public Opinion for the Health of Nations.”
This work achieves several significant objectives:
- incorporates one strong document to include all the points made in NIGH's earlier draft proposals.
- reflects NIGH’s original overarching mandate to increase public awareness about the critical priority of global health by calling for widespread “mobilization of public awareness for the health of nations“.
- calls for related support for the full implementation — by all UN Member States — of the recommendations of the 2009 UN ECOSOC Ministerial Declaration
- acknowledges the significant contributions of many people and organizations to the current state of global health.
- encourages a confluence between worldwide efforts to improve health and to address environmental concerns with the subtitle "Healthy People on a Healthy Planet by 2020,” in anticipation of efforts now being focused on ‘Climate Change’, for the 2009 UN December UN Conference in Copenhagen.
- focuses on NIGH’s promise to highlight the 2010 International Year of the Nurse / Florence Nightingale Centennial at the United Nations by requesting the 2009 United Nations General Assembly to “specifically recognize and honour the global community of nurses who — in celebrating the International Year of the Nurse during the 2010 Nightingale Centennial and in renewing their commitment to the health of all peoples — are mobilizing and launching an active public awareness campaign of advocacy in support of world health and for all the Millennium Development Goals determined by this Assembly’s Millennium Summit”.
- re-focuses NIGH’s earlier proposal for a UN Decade for a Healthy World by 2020 with upgraded language calling for a strong foundation to further this mandate — across 2010, throughout the decade and beyond.
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NIGH letter to Permanent Representatives of the United Nations in New York, urging them to adopt a draft resolution to celebrate the “2010 International Year of the Nurse,” the Centennial of Florence Nightingale, through a global campaign to raise global public awareness and support for the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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Action is underway to address a fundamental flaw in human progress that is causing more than half a million women to die every year from childbirth and the risks of pregnancy.
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This report highlights 2009 NIGH's activities - on behalf of those more than 20,000 nurses and others who have signed the Nightingale Declaration from 110 nations, also indicating their support for proposed UN Resolutions declaring the Year 2010 as the International Year of the Nurse - and 2011-2020 as a UN Decade for a Healthy World.
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Those millions who work in the health field may consider health as the most important social goal for themselves, their community and their nation. But they are a minority and not always a persuasive minority.
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In collaboration with a worldwide team, the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) is focusing on the adoption of three proposed United Nations Resolutions.
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A United Nations Decade for a Healthy World, 2011-2020, has been proposed as an innovative framework to mobilize public opinion and strengthen the collective commitment of all nations to the health of their peoples as a first priority.
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