The ‘Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All’ (GAP) was launched in September 2019 by twelve multilateral health, development and humanitarian agencies to better support countries to accelerate progress towards the health-related Sustainable Development Goals through strengthened collaboration and coordination. However, since then, there has been not much news about the GAP and its implementation. Today, the Watch the GAP! Task Group (which includes Wemos) launches its analysis paper on the GAP. Does it fit with national health policies and ownership? Does the GAP contribute to what it is intended to do, and can it make a difference?
The ‘Watch the GAP!’ Civil Society Task Group is part of the Kampala Initiative to advance cooperation and solidarity for health equity within and beyond aid. The group recognises that close attention needs to be paid to the implementation of the Global Action Plan, and developed this paper to inspire civil society to advocate more space for engagement with the GAP, and to closely follow its role in strengthening coordination among signatory agencies at global and country level.
With the paper ‘Watch the GAP! A critical civil society perspective on the development, potential impact and implementation of the ‘Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All’, the task group aims to draw the interest of a broader civil society audience to the GAP and to initiate discussions about whether the GAP has the potential to make a difference in the work of the involved agencies and, if yes, if it will be for better or for worse.
Our conclusion is as little surprising as the GAP itself. Global health advocate Myria Koutsoumpa (Wemos): “It’s all in the doing. Our initial analysis as presented in this paper, underlines our assessment that the implementation of the GAP needs – and deserves – to be critically watched by civil society.”
This paper is a starting point for ‘Watching the GAP’. On Oct 19 2020, Africa Health Budget Network, Civil Society Advisory Group for the GAP, Community of Practitioners for Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH), and the Watch the GAP! Civil Society Task Group organised the first webinar in the ‘Watch the GAP!’ webinar series. It focused on the history, the set-up and the objectives of the GAP as seen by the GAP agencies and civil society. You can watch the recording of the webinar here.
Read the paper ‘Watch the GAP! A critical civil society perspective on the development, potential impact and implementation of the GAP’ (also on our knowledge platform Wemosresources.org)
Read more about the Kampala Initiative (and more on Medicus Mundi International)
Photo: Laissez Fare via Flickr Creative Commons
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