IBFAN receives the Right Livelihood Award at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm on Wednesday, 9 December 1998. Photo: Britta Hejdenberg, Elisabeth Sterken, Ruth d’Arango, Ira Puspadewi, Alison Linnecar, Pauline Kisanga, Hisayo Kidokoro, Patti Rundall.

“In 1998 IBFAN received the Right Livelihood Award. The RLA Jury has honoured IBFAN “for its committed and effective campaigning over nearly twenty years for the rights of mothers to choose to breastfeed their babies, in the full knowledge of the health benefits of breastmilk, and free from the commercial pressure and misinformation with which companies promote breastmilk substitutes.”

Baby Milk Action is the UK member of the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN).

Baby Milk Action accepts no commercial funding.

CLICK HERE for IBFAN’s funding policy

IBFAN funding policy 2010

2015 Clarification on Gates Funding.

2006 IBFAN guidance on Conferences

IBFAN endorsment form for Europe

IBFAN 7  principles

IBFAN Social Media Links

@ibfanglobal

www.instagram.com/ibfanglobal
www.facebook.com/ibfanglobal
https://twitter.com/ibfanglobal
www.youtube.com/@ibfanglobal

IBFAN VIDEO:  This 8-minute film was made by IBFAN Mexico for the 40th Anniversary of the International Code in 2021.  It explains the importance of the Nestlé Boycott and citizen’s action,  IBFAN’s key role in the birth of the Code and how we have helped ensure it stays updated and relevant.  

Alive and Thrive Putting Babies Before Profits- THE HISTORY OF THE DEADLY FIGHT AGAINST THE FORMULA INDUSTRY

Chronology of work in the European Union

IBFAN VIDEO : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8baEBFra-0&t=332s

IBFAN GIFA

Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India

World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative  WBTi

Global Breastfeeding Collective 

TIGERS movie

Here is another short film that shows you some of the people we are working with.

You can show this video full screen by clicking on the right-hand icon.

Ann Armentani 12/7/98
BELLAMY CONGRATULATES IBFAN ON AWARD
Prize recognises contributions made to infant and young child health and survival
NEW YORK, 7 December 98 Carol Belamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), congratulated the International Baby Food Action Network ( I Bf A N ) on winning the 1998 Right Livelihood Award.
Commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize” the award will be shared with two human rights workers: a professor campaigning against cancer by tackling pollution and a Chilean group fighting for the regulation of dam building. The presentation will take place at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm on Wednesday, 9 December.
“IBFAN’s untiring efforts in the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding have been an important contribution to infant and young child health and survival,” Bellamy said. “In addition, the organisation’s constant monitoring of company compliance with the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes indicates that much remains to be done to protect parents and health professionals from commercial pressures to feed infants artificially.’
IBFAN is an international network of over 140 public interest groups in 70 developingand industrialized nations. Its members work closely with  UNICEF and other UN agencies, ticularly WHO and UNHCR, to achieve improved infant health and nutrition through the promotion of breastfeeding and the elimination of inappropriate marketing of infant foods, bottles and teats.   In announcing the award, the Right Livelihood Foundation called on governments everywhere to legislate according to the World Health Organization’s International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and challenged companies which continue to break and bend the Code to put the health and lives of babies before their profits
For further information, please contact:
Ruth Ayisi, UNICEF Media Section, NY 212-326-7516 Madeline Eisner, UNICEF Media Section, NY 212-326-7261

Wednesday, October 21, 1998

Breastfeeding on world agenda

An international award to a foundation for campaigning against baby milk substitutes has brought breastfeeding back into the limelight. Since intensive attention was put on the subject in the 1980s, the subject has had all too little care. The problem remains.

By Moussa Awounda

STOCKHOLM: Action to promote breastfeeding instead of baby milk substitutes, a major cause celebre a decade ago, seems to have faded in recent years. Yet the problem has not gone away.

The multinational companies selling baby milk powder are marketing their products with unrelenting vigour, and even though many boycotts of the 1980s are still in place they are out of the public eye.

Nestle, the biggest manufacturer with 40 per cent of the market, even forced UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund) to take down posters warning of risks associated with the powder when both had exhibition stands at the annual conference of Britain’s ruling Labour Party. The party organisers said they were “offending our sponsors”.

UNICEF research suggests that reversing the decline in breastfeeding could save the lives of 1.5 million infants every year. It shows that babies fed on milk substitutes are up to 2.5 times more likely to die of diarrhoea — a key infant killer — than those who are breastfed.

After all, milk powder needs added water. If the water is unsafe, as is often the case in developing countries, then the powdered milk is by definition dangerous. And breast milk contains antibodies against some infections that, obviously, powder cannot supply.

Which is why the staff of the Geneva Infant Feeding Association (GIFA) in Switzerland, a member of the International Baby Food Action Network, could not believe their ears when they heard that IBFAN had won an international award.

Nancy-Jo Peck, of GIFA, who is also health adviser in the Europe region office for IBFAN, said: “This recognition confirms that we have made some headway after all these years fighting on behalf of babies and mothers. We hope it will help put breastfeeding issues on the world agenda again.”

IBFAN brings together 150 pro-breastfeeding groups from 90 countries to campaign jointly. It was one of four organisations named by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation in Stockholm to share SEK 1.8 million.

The other winners were the US-based Caner Prevention Coalition; the Centre for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights in Croatia; and the Grupo de Accion por el Biobio in Chile.

Jakob von Uexkull, the German-Swedish philanthropist who founded RLA, quoted the jury’s citation which praised Right Livelihood for “its committed and effective campaigning over nearly 20 years for the rights of mothers to choose to breastfeed their babies, in the full knowledge of the health benefits of breastmilk, and free from the commercial pressure and misinformation with which companies promote breastmilk substitutes”.

Uexkull called on governments to make law in accordance with the World Health Organisation’s International Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

He said companies continued to break and bend the code, refusing to “put the health and lives of babies before profits”.

The code was one of the early successes of the campaign to promote breastmilk. It arose from a meeting between the WHO and UNICEF in 1979, at which Dutch-born Annelies Allain and Briton Andrew Chetley were present.

That year the two founded IBFAN as a network of organisations, since charities like War on Want, Chetley’s then employer, could not take on such an overtly “political” campaign.

The breastfeeding movement was already in existence at that time. It was born during the post-1960s intellectual climate, its initial supporters inspired by the growing consciousness of global exploitation by multinationals.

Some saw it as a gender issue, emphasising women’s rights to choose how to bring up their children.

Between then and IBFAN’s founding, the movement began to grow. By 1977 boycotts of Nestle and other food companies including Cow and Gate, Wyeth, Albert Ross and Mead Johnsson, pushed the issue of unethical and pressure marketing of baby food to world attention.

In Switzerland, a War on Want pamphlet entitled The Baby Killer was translated as “Nestle Kills Babies”. The company sued, both for the title and for alleged libels within the pamphlet.

But after two years all charges except those relating to the title had been dropped. The judge fined the two activists responsible just $ 150.

In 1978, the US Senate held hearings under Senator Ted Kennedy into baby milk marketing. A Nestle executive called to testify agreed with Kennedy that reconstituting baby powder using polluted water caused waterborne infections. But the company had “no corporate responsibility” arising from that fact, he said.

Over the succeeding years the spotlight seemed to shift — partly, perhaps, through the more broad-based agenda championed during the UN Decade for Women, 1985-95.

The single-issue breastfeeding movemnet, some said, had become just part of the mainstream.

In Britain, Baby Milk Action — a constituent part of IBFAN — briefly lifted its sanctions against Nestle in 1984. Although it later resumed the boycott, once it was realised that Nestle had reneged on its assurances, the lull obviously affected momentum and public following.

In many African countries, the power of the baby food lobby, it advertising, and the growing number of women joining the workforce have all conspired to minimise the breastfeeding cause.

In the Philippines, Nestle has allegedly been hiring nurses to act as health workers, whose recommendations to new mothers always include the use of baby formula.

Against this unsympathetic backdrop, breastfeeding activists welcome the Right Livelihood Award. It is also a measure of the sensitivity sections of society attach to the harm food companies can do, especially as world markets globalise and liberalise.

To Baby Milk Action in Britain, this recognition re-emphasises the need for a global role, since Nestle and the other companies hardly market their products in Britain and other parts of Western Europe.

“The award gives us added impetus to focus more on areas of policy and legislation,” said Patti Rundall, from Baby Milk Action. “With our experiences we are able to help our sister organisations abroad in these areas”. — Gemini

The writer is a Kenyan journalist living and working in Sweden. Child growth and nutrition are her major concerns.