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The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments

INTRODUCTION: United Nations (UN) agencies are influential global health actors that can introduce legal instruments to call on Member States to act on pressing issues. This paper examines the deployment and strength of global health law instruments used by UN actors to call on Member States to rest...

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Autores principales: Sing, Fiona, Mackay, Sally, Cinà, Margherita, Swinburn, Boyd
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10314450/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37391743
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00939-4
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author Sing, Fiona
Mackay, Sally
Cinà, Margherita
Swinburn, Boyd
author_facet Sing, Fiona
Mackay, Sally
Cinà, Margherita
Swinburn, Boyd
author_sort Sing, Fiona
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: United Nations (UN) agencies are influential global health actors that can introduce legal instruments to call on Member States to act on pressing issues. This paper examines the deployment and strength of global health law instruments used by UN actors to call on Member States to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing. METHODS: Global health law instruments were identified from a review of four UN agencies that have a mandate over children’s exposure to marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products namely: the World Health Organization (WHO); the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Data on marketing restrictions were extracted and coded and descriptive qualitative content analysis was used to assess the strength of the instruments. RESULTS: A wide range of instruments have been used by the four agencies: seven by the WHO; two by the FAO; three by the UNGA; and eight by the UN human rights infrastructure. The UN human rights instruments used strong, consistent language and called for government regulations to be enacted in a directive manner. In contrast, the language calling for action by the WHO, FAO and UNGA was weaker, inconsistent, did not get stronger over time and varied according to the type of instrument used. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that a child rights-based approach to restricting unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children would be supported by strong human rights legal instruments and would allow for more directive recommendations to Member States than is currently provided by WHO, FAO and UNGA. Strengthening the directives in the instruments to clarify Member States’ obligations using both WHO and child rights mandates would increase the utility of global health law and UN actors’ influence. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-023-00939-4.
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spelling pubmed-103144502023-07-02 The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments Sing, Fiona Mackay, Sally Cinà, Margherita Swinburn, Boyd Global Health Research INTRODUCTION: United Nations (UN) agencies are influential global health actors that can introduce legal instruments to call on Member States to act on pressing issues. This paper examines the deployment and strength of global health law instruments used by UN actors to call on Member States to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing. METHODS: Global health law instruments were identified from a review of four UN agencies that have a mandate over children’s exposure to marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products namely: the World Health Organization (WHO); the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Data on marketing restrictions were extracted and coded and descriptive qualitative content analysis was used to assess the strength of the instruments. RESULTS: A wide range of instruments have been used by the four agencies: seven by the WHO; two by the FAO; three by the UNGA; and eight by the UN human rights infrastructure. The UN human rights instruments used strong, consistent language and called for government regulations to be enacted in a directive manner. In contrast, the language calling for action by the WHO, FAO and UNGA was weaker, inconsistent, did not get stronger over time and varied according to the type of instrument used. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that a child rights-based approach to restricting unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children would be supported by strong human rights legal instruments and would allow for more directive recommendations to Member States than is currently provided by WHO, FAO and UNGA. Strengthening the directives in the instruments to clarify Member States’ obligations using both WHO and child rights mandates would increase the utility of global health law and UN actors’ influence. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-023-00939-4. BioMed Central 2023-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10314450/ /pubmed/37391743 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00939-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Sing, Fiona
Mackay, Sally
Cinà, Margherita
Swinburn, Boyd
The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title_full The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title_fullStr The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title_full_unstemmed The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title_short The utilisation of legal instruments by United Nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of UN instruments
title_sort utilisation of legal instruments by united nations actors to restrict the exposure of children to unhealthy food and beverage marketing: a qualitative content analysis of un instruments
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10314450/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37391743
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00939-4
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