The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Global Health Governance

Abstract

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have been around much longer than the current debate suggests, with the Anti-Slavery Society (1839) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (1863) being among the first CSOs to be established in the nineteenth century. Particularly in the field of health, CSOs have always played an important role in the provision of medical services or the realization of humanitarian relief, especially in the developing world. However, it can be observed that both the quantity and the quality of their activities as actors of global health governance (GHG) have increased since the 1980s. According to different studies (for example Anheier et al. 2004; UIA 2004) there are now approximately 3000 international CSOs that belong directly to the health sector (of approximately 51 000–59 000 international CSOs altogether).