The Future of Inter-Governmental Organization Partnerships for Health and Human Rights

Over the past 20-plus years, there has been a significant rise in the “partnership model” in global health. Mainly involving collaboration between public and private spheres, some partnerships include only inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). This chapter explores how three types of partnerships—global public-private partnerships (usually focused on strengthening delivery or access to specific products and technologies), public-public partnerships addressing climate change (a key and growing determinant of health outcomes), and a public-public partnership of four IGOs working to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis—protect, promote, and realize human rights principles in their work. Beyond a superficial framing of “protecting the vulnerable” or acknowledgment of the importance of human rights, there remains little substantive human rights–focused activity in the majority of partnerships. This chapter offers a forward-looking agenda for mainstreaming human rights more explicitly into the work of these key actors in global health.