Global health, aid effectiveness and the changing role of the WHO

Since the 1990s the growing number of actors involved has considerably changed the field of global health governance (GHG). Partnerships between states, international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, and also civil society organizations have helped overcome conflicts between the profit-driven production of medicines and the health needs of poor countries. However, they have also led to a vast entanglement of responsibilities, with the WHO losing its profile as the central authority on global health. In recent years, however, the impacts of the Paris Declaration on GHG and a number of other processes have again strengthened the position of the WHO. (GIGA

Can geopolitics derail the pandemic treaty?

During the pandemic, the world has experienced how the geopolitics of global health have immediate, ruthless repercussions for the lives and livelihoods of billions. The challenge of a pandemic treaty negotiation process is to be responsive to these interconnected levels of geopolitics

applying health promotion principles to a pandemic threat

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Politics or Technocracy – What Next for Global Health? Comment on “Navigating Between Stealth Advocacy and Unconscious Dogmatism: The Challenge of Researching the Norms, Politics and Power of Global Health”

Politics play a central part in determining health and development outcomes as Gorik Ooms highlights in his recent commentary. As health becomes more global and more politicized the need grows to better understand the inherently political processes at all levels of governance, such as ideological positions, ideas, value judgments, and power. I agree that global health research should strengthen its contribution to generating such knowledge by drawing more on political science, such research is gaining ground. Even more important is – as Ooms indicates – that global health scholars better understand their own role in the political process. It is time to acknowledge that expert-based technocratic approaches are no less political. We will need to reflect and analyse the role of experts in global health governance to a greater extent and in that context explore the links between politics, expertise and democrac