Children’s Rights, Childhood Obesity and Health Inequalities

This article focuses on the relationship between unhealthy food marketing, obesity, health inequalities and children’s rights. In particular, it reflects on the extent to which a children’s rights-based approach to the regulation of unhealthy food marketing can promote more effective obesity- and non-communicable disease-prevention strategies and thus help reduce health inequalities. After establishing that food marketing increases health inequalities, it calls for the recognition that food marketing has become a major children’s rights concern that requires States to effectively implement the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Set of Recommendations on the Marketing of Foods and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children (WHO 2010a).