To support and enrich the discussions held at the Global Health Symposium on “Strengthening Global Health Governance: Defending the Public Interest and Holding Powerful Private Actors Accountable,” a set of background readings was shared with participants to help frame and inform the discussions. These selected papers and resources explore key issues such as financialisation, corporate influence, regulatory dynamics, and accountability in global health.
Below are the links to the background readings:
Background General Readings
- Expert Group Meeting on the Accountability of Powerful Private Actors in Global Health
- Global Health Governance and the Challenge of Holding Power to Account
- Private Financial Actors and Financialisation in Global Health
- Tax systems and policy: Crucial for good health and good governance
Background General Session: PPAs and Food System Governance
- UN Tax Convention Factsheet 1
- UN Tax Convention Factsheet 2
- A roadmap and guidance towards UNFSS+4 and beyond
- The rise of big food and agriculture: corporate influence in the food system
- The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system
- Taxing for health: taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages in east and southern African countries
- Scaling up promising practice to promote healthy urban people and ecosystems in east and southern Africa
- The rise of multi-stakeholderism, the power of ultra-processed food corporations, and the implications for global food governance: a network analysis
- Regulatory responses to ultra-processed foods are skewed towards behaviour change and not food system transformation
- Promoting sustainable wellbeing in urban food and waste management systems in east and southern Africa: Learning from case studies of promising practice
- Food System Stream 2A Pre-reading Powerful private actors and food system governance: Sifting power for sustainable
food system transitions - Paris Declaration on Business & Nutrition 2030
- The Role of African Countries in Defining New Global Tax Rules
- N4G Paris Commitment guide
- Agroecology-oriented farmers’ groups. A missing level in the construction of agroecology-based local agri-food systems?
- Can agriculture stop COVID-21, -22, and -23? Yes, but not by greenwashing agribusiness
- Policy Brief | Governance of Food Systems Transformation
- Corporate interest groups and their implications for global food governance: mapping and analysing the global corporate influence network of the transnational ultra-processed food industry
- Food from somewhere: building food security and resilience through territorial markets.
- Ecological regulation for healthy and sustainable food systems: responding to the global rise of ultra‐processed foods
- A critical analysis of the UNFSS roadmap for “corporate accountability” of food systems transformation: A dangerous façade of industry aligned rhetoric, which neglects international human rights standards and marginalizes front line voices. FIAN International.
- Corporate Capture of FAO: Industry's Deepening Influence on Global Food Governance
- Ban sale of food containing trans fat: expert
- Civil Society and Social Movements in Food System Governance
- Agroecology for Structural One Health
- A review of public health-related food laws in east and southern Africa
Background General Session: The Financial and Corporate Nexus in Health Systems
Effects of Corporatisation on Clinical Practice in Private Healthcare Institutions
- Transnational Multistakeholder Partnerships as Vessels to Finance Development: Navigating the Accountability Waters
- Multistakeholder Partnerships for Development and the Financialization of Development Assistance
Background General Session: Digital Health Security and Governance
- A digital health governance agenda for sexual and reproductive health and rights
- AI in Healthcare: Applications and Challenges
- AI in Healthcare: A Tool, Not A Total Solution
- AI-assisted facial analysis in healthcare: From disease detection to comprehensive management
- AI Governance in Malaysia: Risks, Challenges and Pathways Forward.
Background General Session: Climate Justice
- Climate change mitigation: tackling the commercial determinants of planetary health inequity
- Climate justice: priorities for equitable recovery from the pandemic
- Reparative justice and COP29
- The birth of global public investment | Mutual interest and mutuality in 21st century international public finance
- Post-growth economics: a must for planetary health justice
Background General Session: Unpacking Private Philanthropy
- The Gates Foundation’s network diplomacy in European donor countries
- The Current State of Billionaire Wealth
Suggested citation: "Background Papers for the Global Health Symposium," United Nations University, UNU-IIGH, 2025-08-01, https://unu.edu/iigh/article/background-papers-global-health-symposium.
