Summary of CEHAPE Taskforce meeting, Brussels 1st of March 2007

WECF sees progress on Children's Environmental Health Programme

06.03.2007 |Sonja Haider

NGO preparatory meeting for the Vienna inter-ministerial, hosted by the Belgium Ministry of Health and Environment

Summary by Sonja Haider, WECF Director Germany

First of all I would like to state, that I have seen personally quite a development in this Children´s Environmental Health Process.

After visiting a preparation meeting in Jan 2004 and participating in the Budapest Conference June 2004 my impression is, that WHO and the member states are taking the issue seriously and working hard to achieve substantial goals. It´s no longer just throwing some issues together, but the process now works towards for clearly defined four regional priority goals (RPG).

The following points are positive:

Indicators will allow to judge, how countries progressed – will be presented at the IMR
The Table of Child-specific actions (TOA) goes through an assessment of effectiveness: For every RPG Scientist screen through available studies and than priorities will be defined
Risk communication tools will be developed to help countries in communicating with the public
Since Budapest the CEHAPE task force has grown and even for the Inter-Ministerial in Vienna (12-14 June 07) several ministers are planning to come. So there is high level interest in the process.
Discussions are taking place to create a legally binding CEHAPE (this is still quite a controversial debate: different problems, different legislation, on the other side without any obligation there will be no funds allocated to it)
European CEH process is a success story and copied now in other regions of the world
There is a well organised youth participation
Governments are asked to take one NGO and one youth representative onto their delegation (of 6 persons in total)
Health risks arising from climate change has been added as a new issue

The Belgium Government invited the member states representatives and NGOs to a reception on the Grand Place in Brussels, Feb 28th evening

On the other hand these were the negative points:

WHO is currently in a restructuring process. H&E will be a topic furthermore, but the backing of the Health ministries for the CEH process is currently missing (and WHO bosses are listening mainly to the Health sector – rather than to the Environment sector, which is heavily supporting)

There will be only 12 seats for NGOs (6 for the Environmental NGOs, 6 for the Health NGOs) at IMR in Vienna, because of lack of space. But each goverment delegation also gets only 6 seats.

Director of Environment, Belgium Ministry for Health and Environment, giving a word of welcome

EU Environment and Health Consultative Forum, Friday 2 March; WECF participated

The next day on March 2nd, the EU organised its Environment and Health Consultative forum, discussing the midterm review. WECF provided input on the link to the EU Lisbon Agenda, and on the need for broad public information on environmental health risks.