The Global Action Plan in State Participation

Team Members: L. Amechi, C. Callaro, and T. Massey*

*Note: The team members contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order.

Infographic

Please look at the infographic for the topic explored by the team.

Podcast

Please listen to the team's podcast with Google Chrome. The transcript can be found here.

GAP_Podcast.m4a

Advocacy Letter

Please read the team's letter to the WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

800535-2495635 - Loti Amechi - Apr 4, 2022 1026 PM - Advocacy Letter_Final_Loti Amechi.pdf

Blog Post

LEIGH. 2019. “CIVIL SOCIETY COMMENDS, CRITIQUES GLOBAL ACTION PLAN ON SDG3.” PHM-NA. HTTPS://PHM-NA.ORG/2019/09/CIVIL-SOCIETY-CRITIQUES-GLOBAL-ACTION-PLAN-WHO-GAP-ON-SDG3/ (FEBRUARY 27, 2022).

COMPLIANCE WITHIN THE GLOBAL ACTION PLAN

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL ACTION PLAN FOR HEALTHY LIVES AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL (GAP)

"The Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All” is an international organization that brings together 13 multilateral health, development and humanitarian agencies to better support countries to accelerate progress towards the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." (The Global Action Plan)

EXPLAINING NONCOMPLIANCE

The Global Action Plan (GAP) faces two problems within state-cooperation. The first problem is that The GAP does not align with the national priorities of the member states, this is also a high severity risk. This means that the GAP has a wide depth of cooperation—the extent to which it requires states to depart from what they would have done in the organization’s absence (Downs et al 1996). The second problem the mechanisms for joining The GAP are too difficult. To give an example, think of cooperation as a scholarship. If the scholarship is attractive but has too many rules or obstacles in the application process, someone may not want to apply anymore. In the case of cooperation within the GAP, states could feel as though the hoops they are required to jump through pose too much trouble. Limitations on the capacity of states to carry out their requirements is a primary reason for why states do not cooperate (Chayes and Chayes 1993), so states with limited capacity will not want to join the GAP, an organization where states carry out many requirements, and this will affect the diversity and numbers of its membership. It is important for international organizations to provide services for different categories of member states because they receive greater opportunity for appealing to different constituencies (Elistrup-Sangiovanni 2018), so the limited membership of The GAP is a problem.

JOINING AND COLLABORATING

There are several factors that are important to the survivability of international organizations, two of those are number and membership. Having a large and heterogenous membership increases the likelihood of IO survival and it helps to reduce possibilities of failure in the organizational structure of an IO (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2018). This could be a very helpful criteria for The GAP to try to meet, seeing that doing so would increase vitality. the GAP needs to grow in both number of members and diversity of member states because IOs with global membership are more likely to remain relevant throughout time because they are multiregional (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2018).

Country engagement within the GAP relies heavily on the leadership capacity of each individual country. A stronger and more collaborative government allows for the GAP to partner more easily and closer with existing health organizations within each country (Global Action Plan 2021). Because of this “requirement,” joining The GAP can be relatively convoluted. Involvement of The GAP is based on each country's need, so there

are countries that need a smaller partnership with GAP than other countries. The GAP has made steps toward making joining this IO easier with GAP accelerator-groups. These groups team up with an existing GAP signatory agency to better serve countries in need. By using these accelerator-groups The GAP increased their state involvement from five states to 37 states in one year. There are more efforts to be made to make access to The GAP better, for instance possibly finding a way in which the government plays a smaller role in the joining process, especially in states that have unstable governments (Global Action Plan 2021).

FIGURE 1. FROM THE 2021 GAP PROGRESS REPORT SHOWS VARIOUS RISKS OF THE GAP. THE ONE CIRCLED IN RED IS THE RISK BEING HIGHLIGHTED.

One of the risks outlined in Figure 1, the 2021 GAP Progress Report, is that there is no incentive for closer collaboration among GAP member states. They report this risk as a high likelihood and high severity (Global Action Plan 2021). This is an essential aspect of an IO, without incentive to collaborate, member states truly have no reason to work together to achieve the goals of the IO. Even in an IO such as The GAP that focuses on the health of citizens in the countries it serves, there can be no assumption that these states will work together even if the goal is something as great as public health improvement.

LOOKING FORWARD

Using analogical reasoning, we can analyze what IOs like WHO and the UN have done in the past to increase state participation. With analogical reasoning, we look at similar situations that have occurred in the past or present (with regards to the lack of state involvement in IO) and utilize what was

used and implement it to solve the GAP’s case of state involvement. For example, when looking at an organization like WHO, in 2020 Trump made a declaration of his desire to withdraw the United States as a member of WHO due the organizations financial instability and poor management. Luckily this decision was overturned by President Biden when he came into office. However, the United States’ continued support for WHO is dependent on improvement of the “organization’s effectiveness” (KFF 2021). The better that WHO becomes in handling their operations (ex: events, campaign initiatives, internal affairs, etc), symbiotically, state involvement and commitment increases. By improving these things gradually, the WHO has been able to secure the United States’ engagement up until this point. Therefore, with GAP being an offshoot of the WHO, combating such internal weakness can help secure (and even increase) state participation in the organization.

FIGURE 2. “GLOBAL ACTION PLAN ON CHILD WASTING.” GAP FRAMEWORK. HTTPS://WWW.CHILDWASTING.ORG/ (FEBRUARY 27, 2022).

Bibliography

Chayes, Abram, and Antonia Handler Chayes. 2012. “On Compliance (1993).” In International Law and International Relations, eds. Beth A. Simmons

and Richard H. Steinberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65–91.

Downs, George W., David M. Rocke, and Peter N. Barsoom. 1996. “Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?”

International organization 50(3): 379–406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300033427.

Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette. 2020. “Death of International Organizations. The Organizational Ecology of Intergovernmental Organizations, 1815–2015.”

The review of international organizations 15(2): 339–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11558-018-9340-5.

“The Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-Being for All - About.” Who.int.

https://www.who.int/initiatives/sdg3-global-action-plan/about (February 27, 2022).

Sdg, Global Action Plan. 2021. “Stronger Collaboration for an Equitable and Resilient Recovery towards the Health-Related Sustainable

Development Goals: 2021 Progress Report on the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-Being for All.” Who.int.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240026209 (February 21, 2022).

KFF. The U.S. Government and the World Health Organization. (n.d.). The U.S. Government and the World Health Organization.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fact-sheet/the-u-s-government-and-the-world-health-organization/

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