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| Title |
The role of non-governmental organizations
in global health diplomacy: negotiating
the Framework Convention on Tobacco
Control |
| Author(s) |
Raphael Lencucha, Anita Kothari and Ronald Labonte - Personal Name
|
Subject |
Global Health Development |
| Publisher |
Oxford University Press |
| Publishing Year |
2010 |
| Specific Detail Info |
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is an exemplar result
of global health diplomacy, based on its global reach (binding on all World
Health Organization member nations) and its negotiation process. The FCTC
negotiations are one of the first examples of various states and non-state entities
coming together to create a legally binding tool to govern global health. They
have demonstrated that diplomacy, once consigned to interactions among state
officials, has witnessed the dilution of its state-centric origins with the inclusion
of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the diplomacy process.
To engage in the discourse of global health diplomacy, NGO diplomats are
immediately presented with two challenges: to convey the interests of larger
publics and to contribute to inter-state negotiations in a predominantly
state-centric system of governance that are often diluted by pressures from
private interests or mercantilist self-interest on the part of the state itself. How
do NGOs manage these challenges within the process of global health diplomacy
itself? What roles do, and can, they play in achieving new forms of global health
diplomacy? This paper addresses these questions through presentation of
findings from a study of the roles assumed by one group of non-governmental
actors (the Canadian NGOs) in the FCTC negotiations.
The findings presented are drawn from a larger grounded theory study.
Qualitative data were collected from 34 public documents and 18 in-depth
interviews with participants from the Canadian government and Canadian
NGOs. This analysis yielded five key activities or roles of the Canadian NGOs
during the negotiation of the FCTC: monitoring, lobbying, brokering knowledge,
offering technical expertise and fostering inclusion. This discussion begins to
address one of the key goals of global health diplomacy, namely ‘the challenges
facing health diplomacy and how they have been addressed by different groups
and at different levels of governance’ (Kickbusch et al. 2007a: 972). |
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