Committed to health for all? How the G7/G8 rate.

"In 1978, building on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights , a United Nations conference proposed the goal of health for all by the year 2000 ( WHO, 1978 ). In 2003, only limited progress has been made toward that goal. This article assesses the reasons for that lack of progress, with specific reference to the dominant role played by the G8 (Group of 8) nations in the international economic and political order. In other words, it provides a “report card” on key health impacts and implications of G8 policies, with particular reference to effects in countries outside the industrialized world that account for roughly five-sixths of the world's population."

"Instead, the 1999–2001 Summits addressed issues of nutrition primarily by emphasizing the need to promote applications of biotechnology. The biotechnology industry is actively supported by some G7 governments as an element of their strategies for the knowledge economy, but its relevance to nutrition and food security is highly controversial (; ; ; ). Part of the dispute is about whether the problem should be defined with reference to resource scarcity (with the corollary being that it can be “solved” by improving agricultural productivity through, e.g. the diffusion of genetically modified crops) or resource distribution. Amartya , , 's path-breaking work on the political economy of famine showed that famines are not “natural” phenomena, and that access to nutrition and food security are directly related either to purchasing power or to the availability of some other entitlement to food. This may explain the absence of specific G7 commitments on the topic. It could be argued that they are addressing the issues instead by way of economic development and poverty reduction, but the adequacy of their commitments in this area is itself open to question. So, too—as we note later in the article—is the appropriateness of the underlying presumptions about economic development."