Under the morning skies of Kirikiriroa, crowds are expected to gather as part of the Hīkoi for Our Health nationwide movement calling for urgent government action to fix Aotearoa’s broken health system.

Led by Lady Tureiti Moxon, Managing Director of Te Kōhao Health, today’s hīkoi will travel at 10.00am from Hamilton Lake Playground to Waikato Hospital, carrying the Buller Declaration on the State of the New Zealand Health System, now signed by more than 100,000 New Zealanders.

The Declaration, which began in Buller on the West Coast in 2024, calls for decisive government action to address the health crisis affecting rural, Māori, and low-income whānau.

Today, in an unprecedented move, Lady Tureiti Moxon has filed a comprehensive 42-page “urgent action/early warning complaint,” supported by 185 footnotes, with the United Nations, seeking urgent intervention in Aotearoa New Zealand under the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

She has requested the opportunity to meet with the five-member working group responsible for the Early Warning and Urgent Action procedure in Geneva, before or during the Committee’s upcoming 116th session, scheduled from 17 November to 5 December 2025, when Aotearoa New Zealand is due for review.

Lady Tureiti, a Māori leader of Ngāti Pāhauwera, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, and Kāi Tahu descent, and Chair of the National Urban Māori Authority, has been advocating for Māori health and rights for over three decades.

It All Begins Here