| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
During the past ten years there has been an increased willingness by international
health organizations to include multisectoral nonstate actors
in their decisionmaking processes. The stated aim of expanding multisectoral
involvement is to increase information flows from those on the ground,
to create a sense of policy ownership by those implementing various health programs,
to create a more unified front against global health priorities, and to
create a more robust sense of institutional legitimacy. One such institution has
been the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was designed
specifically to bring various stakeholders together to create a more coordinated
mechanism to combat three of the world's most destructive diseases.
The purpose of this essay is to discuss the role of nonstate actors in the
decisionmaking processes of the Global Fund. The aim of this discussion is
not to undermine the good work of the Global Fund, but to expose certain
structural weaknesses in the current way nonstate actors are incorporated into
the governance process and to illustrate how these structural processes might
negate their effective participation. By doing so, this exploration will help expose
various deficit gaps between the stated aims of multisectoral participation
within the Global Fund and its actual practice. The goal is to encourage normative
recommendations for increasing the real-world operation of stakeholder
inclusiveness, ownership, partnership, and participation within the Global Fund.
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