Decolonising Global Health

It is well established that colonialism and coloniality produce unequal and exploitative relationships, as well as culturally-inappropriate and badly-designed health policies and programmes. With some roots in colonial and tropical medicine and in the post-colonial imposition of structural adjustment programmes and donor-driven aid programmes on developing countries, colonial power asymmetries have always been a feature of global health. A decolonised and anti-colonial global health offers a vision of equitable and sustainable development, and good health for all.

As a think tank with a mission to promote the values and principles of the UN Charter and amplify the perspectives of the Global South, UNU-IIGH views decolonisation as a process that positively shifts power and encourages forms of global health practice that are better tailored to the needs and contexts of low- and middle-incomes countries and marginalised population groups everywhere.

To address colonialism and coloniality as global health problems, we need a shared understanding of what we mean by colonialism and coloniality, and how it relates to global health. Here we share an explanation of how we define colonialism, coloniality, and other related terms and concepts, and have also published in this Bulletin of the WHO piece, a conceptual framework of three intersecting dimensions consisting of: colonialism within global health; colonisation of global health; and colonialism through global health.  

We have also encouraged continuing conversations with the help of the Miami Institute for Social Sciences through the publication of this essay and subsequent replies, which you can find here and here.