SUSTAINABILITY: HEALTH //
G20 PERFORMANCE ON HEALTH 2008-2024
100
75
50
25
0
Compliance (%)
Conclusions (% words)
Commitments (%)
summits with fewer commitments and broad language tended to have lower compliance. From 2014 to 2019, between 8% and 14% of the declarations’ words were on health, with compliance averaging 69% for those summits. From 2020 to 2023, there were more targeted health commitments, rather than general ones, and compliance was higher. Another cause of compliance is linkages to other sectors. Compliance improved when health was linked with other policy domains, such as sustainable development, which includes climate and gender. The high compliance with the health-related commitments for the 2021 Rome Summit (76%), 2022 Bali Summit (78%) and 2023 New Delhi Summit (83%) followed those commitments’ explicit interrelationship with the One Health Approach, health technologies, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the economies of low- and middle-income countries. CONCLUSION The 2025 G20 presidency has incorporated these lessons. South Africa’s Health Working Group meetings have strategically connected health to
economic recovery, gender equity, digital innovation and labour force development. Side events co-hosted with the Joint Finance-Health Task Force have further reinforced an integrated policy response. South Africa’s presidency offers a model of how to anchor global health commitments in equity, systems thinking and cross-sectoral cooperation. If the G20 succeeds in adopting clear, measurable and actionable commitments – and backs them with coordinated follow-up – the Johannesburg Summit could set a new benchmark for health governance in the years ahead. The Johannesburg Summit thus marks a pivotal moment to solidify the G20’s role as a global health governor. It should underscore South Africa’s longstanding policy orientation towards universal health care and equity – reflected domestically in its National Health Insurance roll-out and internationally in its multilateral leadership during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. With just five years left to achieve the SDGs, this year’s G20 will need to shift further from discussion to action. The world is watching.
// NATASHA PIRZADA Natasha Pirzada is a senior researcher with the G7 and G20 Research Groups and a senior immigration officer with Im- migration, Refugees and Citi- zenship Canada. Her research focuses on G20 and G7 coop- eration on migration and public health policy in the post–Covid- 19 era. She holds a bachelor’s degree in government from Georgetown University and a master’s in environmental stud- ies from the University of Waterloo.
X-TWITTER @g20rg www.g20.utoronto.ca
113 globalgovernanceproject.org
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