IndependentWHO

Since April 26, 2007, the Hippocratic Vigil has been held outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva, which now makes a total of 292 weeks without interruption. The vigil consists of a silent presence that aims to remind the World Health Organization of its obligations as set out in its constitution. We have added the name of Hippocrates to our description because of the ethical rules he instituted for health practitioners. As far as the protection of the health of people affected by the consequences of the nuclear industry is concerned, the World Health Organization ignores these rules. The Vigil takes  [ Read More ]

Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health was mandated by the United Nations to report on the health situation in Japan. He was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Health in June 2008. Since then, he has performed this role with particular attention to the most basic health rights of citizens of the world vis-à-vis powerful industries, the medical lobby or States trying to escape their responsibilities for health. In November 2012, after spending ten days in areas affected by the nuclear disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi, he presented his initial findings at a press conference  [ Read More ]

Helen Caldicott is an Australian anti-nuclear activist and physician, born in Melbourne in 1938. In 1982, she founded Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), and was very active in the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). She divides her time between the United States and Australia and gives lectures in order to make known her views about nuclear power. She gave a press conference in Tokyo November 19, 2012 about the medical consequences of Fukushima. It is, according to her, the

For five and a half years we have maintained a daily presence (the Hippocratic Vigil) outside the headquarters of the WHO in Geneva. The aim of the vigil is to denounce the lies and cover-up by this international organisation on the subject of the health consequences of radioactive pollution. For the last 26 years WHO has done nothing to help the victims of Chernobyl, and is now abandoning the victims of Fukushima in the same way. We now believe it is important to address ourselves to those who are partly responsible for deciding WHO policy. It is for this reason  [ Read More ]

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health from the UN Human Rights Council, Mr Anand Grover (India), will visit Japan from 15th to 26th November, 2012. This mission follows the visit to the UN in Geneva on 30th and 31st October by the Mayor of Futaba (Japan), Katsutaka Idogawa, and Toshio Yanagihara, a lawyer who represents children of Fukushima in a lawsuit demanding that the Japanese authorities evacuate them from the contaminated areas. The town of Futaba is located 3km from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant and is now uninhabitable. The visit by the Special Rapporteur was requested  [ Read More ]

An anti-nuclear city like Geneva, what a dream it must be for the Mayor of Futaba, a small Japanese town 3km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Futaba was wiped out by the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011. Because of the radioactivity the population will be unable to return for decades, if ever. The Mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa, came to Geneva at the end of October to testify at the UN Human Rights Council, along with Toshio Yanagihara, lead lawyer of the “Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial”. Mayor Idogawa was received on 30 October by the Mayor of Geneva,  [ Read More ]