Growing Up Safe: Public Health Approaches to Drug Use Prevention and Treatment in Childhood and Adolescence

This session explored the intersection of health and drug policies as they relate to children and adolescents. It addressed the current gaps and opportunities in aligning public health strategies with drug policy, advocating for approaches that are grounded in scientific evidence and rooted in human rights.

The webinar aims to:

• Examine the existing disconnects between health and drug policies when it comes to drug use prevention and addressing substance use challenges globally.
• Promote policy models informed by science and respectful of human rights.
• Highlight civil society experiences in prevention and intervention practices with children and youth, especially in regions where rights are often compromised.

Speakers

• Anja Busse (WHO) – Unit Head, Drugs, Alcohol and Addictive Behaviours
• Oriol Esculies (Proyecto Hombre, Spain) – International Delegate of Proyecto Hombre
• Shrooq Mansour Ali (Grant Officer) – Psychiatric Care Developmental Foundation
• Christina Von Sperling Afridi (KKAWF, Pakistan) – Founder of KKAWF
• Rajesh Kumar (SPYM, India) – Director General of SPYM
• Cressida de Witte (WFAD, Sweden) – Programme Coordinator & Communication Manager at WFAD
• Rebecca Haines-Saah (Cumming School of Medicine – University of Calgary, Canada)
• Wadih Maalouf (UNODC) – Programme Officer, Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Section
• Dr. Gisela Hansen (Dianova International) – Head of International Relations at Dianova International, Moderator

Organized by Dianova International

Irresistible Harm: The Toxic Politics of Selling Addiction to Children

Over recent decades, industries that profit from harmful products, including ultra-processed foods (UPFs), high-sugar products, tobacco, and nicotine, have strategically designed and marketed these commodities to become irresistible to children and adolescents. Through the use of artificial flavors, excessive sugar, colorful packaging, character branding, catchy advertising, and digital marketing campaigns, these products exploit children’s developmental impressionability and normalize harmful consumption patterns at an early age, making them lifelong consumers of harmful products. This is not accidental, but a result of well-orchestrated and fine-tuned tactics by the industry to maximize profits at any cost. It is a result of deliberate manipulation of addiction, coupled with permissive policy environments and weak global governance, that relies on privileging profit for the few over the health of many.

From point-of-sale strategies to influencer partnerships, these pernicious industry strategies are symptoms of a deeper issue: a toxic political environment where regulatory loopholes, corporate lobbying, conflicts of interest, and corporate electioneering allow harmful industries to operate with impunity. Sugar-laden ultra-processed products, flavored nicotine, and other addictive substances, proven to cause disease and death, continue to retain their social license to remain part of everyday childhood experiences. This is a blatant failure of national governments and global institutions to protect the health and rights of young people.

This debate interrogates the political economy and psychology that sustains these harmful dynamics, buttressed by neoliberal free-market ideology. The discussion will explore how policy capture, institutional complacency, financialization of human rights, and power imbalances, especially between the Global North and Global South, perpetuate and exacerbate a public health crisis rooted in the commercial determinants of health. The session will call for bold, justice and equity-driven policy reforms to dismantle industry influence, power, and propaganda, while building policy environments that prevent harm and protect the health of future generations.

Speakers

• Dr Kerstin Schotte – Medical Officer at the WHO headquarters’ Department for Health Promotion
• Jaime Arcila – Senior Researcher, Tobacco Campaign, Corporate Accountability
• Javier Zúñiga – Legal Coordinator, El Poder del Consumidor-México
• Ashka Naik & Daniel Dorado – Corporate Accountability, Co-Moderators

Organized by Corporate Accountability

The Pandemic Accord: A Framework for Equity and Solidarity? 

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic a special WHA was held in December 2021 where Member States (MS) committed to negotiating a new international instrument to ensure future pandemic response efforts would be characterised by equity and solidarity. In April 2025, Member States concluded negotiations on a draft text of the Pandemic Accord, which will be tabled at WHA78.

This Policy Dialogue aims to reflect on the extent to which the draft text moves global governance institutions, WHO Member States, and ordinary people closer towards a more just global governance framework for pandemics, and improves regional capabilities in the Global South for managing PPR.

Organized by People’s Health Movement and co-hosted by Third World Network (TWN)

Speakers:

• KM GopaKumar:  legal advisor and senior researcher with the Third World Network (TWN),
• Ms Nurhafiza MD Hamzah: Minister Counsellor (Health) at the Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the UN Geneva
• Mr Mohammad Kamruzzaman: Minister of Health at the Permanent Mission of Balngladesh to the UN Geneva
• Dr Ronald Labonté: Professor Emeritus and former Distinguished Research Chair in Globalization and Health Equity in the School of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Ottawa and member of PHM.
• Moderator: Dr Lauren Paremoer. Senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town and member of PHM South Africa

Documentation:

• TWN, WHO: No Firm Commitments for Early Access or Production Rights in Pandemic Deal
• INB Bureau, Proposal_for_WHO_Pandemic_Agreement (On Screen Text 16 April 2025, 1:57pm CEST)
• GHW7, Chapter D2: Unpacking our Pandemic Failures for Future Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response
• GHW7, Chapter D3: Financing Pandemic Recovery, Prevention, Preparedness and Response