UN experts call for regulating advertisements directed at children

Two United Nations(UN) experts on Wednesday urged governments worldwide to regulate advertising directed at children ahead of the August 12 International Youth Day.

Warning about the impact of commercial advertising directed at young children that instills at an early age a culture of over-consumption and indebtedness, the experts said that child-directed advertisements may cause unhealthy consumer behaviour to become ingrained at an early age.

"We call upon states to ban advertising, promotion and sponsorship by manufacturers of alcohol, tobacco, and unhealthy foods in schools and in the context of children's sporting events and other events that could be attended by children," the experts stressed.

The experts, namely the UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health Dainius Puras, said that such commercial messages have the potential to shape children's long term consumer and financial behaviour.

"Many child-directed advertisements promote consumption of unhealthy foods with high sugar content and little nutritional value," they said, adding that unhealthy childhood diets have severe health consequences likely to persist in adulthood.

"Regulating child-directed advertising for food products could therefore substantially improve health and reduce the burden of health-care expenditure," they noted.

According to the experts, after being exposed to large numbers of child-directed advertisements, children may pressure their parents to purchase items that are neither budgeted nor pedagogically necessary, often at the expense of other important household needs.

Many countries have prohibited television advertising at certain hours or in connection with children's programmes. Brazil, Canada, Denmark and Norway have for example restricted certain forms of advertising aimed at children.

The World Health Organization has also recommended that settings where children gather should be free from all forms of marketing of unhealthy foods. Enditem