UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

INSTITIUTE OF DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

BARCHELOR OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

GERRY ROLLINS ODHIAMBO

R67/100611/2017
RMA 207
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
DESCRIBE THE GROWTH AND APPLICATION OF INTERNATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD.
International institutions are collective entities that have cooperate goals working in or cross

border operations, they have legal entities and have authority from states that form them.

Over the past decade the growth and importance of international institutions in the contemporary

world has grown immensely which has seen their importance shift to a new degree, their applied

role has become more embraced in the world we are living today.

If we look at global health, the role of international health institutions has also taken a new turn

of importance for example over the last decade we have seen dramatic innovations in the

architecture of global governance that has taken place in the filed of global health and we can see

that there is degree of sameness between participation levels of non-state actors and institutional

autonomy between the recently formed global health institutions and comparable institutions in

areas such as global development and global governance, that has come in with features in the

new generation of global health institutions such as more participatory governance structures,

greater institutional independence and commitment to performance based financing which are

out perfuming the less independent, less participatory and the less independence based

institutions1. This we have seen in the case of the World Health Organizations (WHO) which

was the centerpiece of global health governance with remarkable legacies that include

remarkable interventions such as the elimination of smallpox etc. but today we seen the etc.

health governance becoming much more complex and diverse because it has been transformed

through significant innovations in the model of governance and accountability that has been

adopted by a new generation of institutions. For instance, over that last decade, global health

1
David Gartner & Homi Khaeas, Scaling Up Impact: Vertical Funds and Innovative Governance, in GETTING TO
SCALE HOW TO BRING DEVELOPMENTSLOUTIONSTO MILLIONS OF POOR PEOPLE (Laurence Chandy, Akio Hosono,
Homi Kharas & Johannes Linn eds,2013).
assistance nearly tripled to over $28 billion per year.2 However, the WHO now represents less

than 5% of total global health funding, and new institutions dominate the flow of resources.

Vertical funds focused on specific global health challenges have been the key drivers of the

expansion of funding. From a base of less than one billion dollars in 2002, these global health

vertical funds grew more than ten-fold and account for approximately two-thirds of the

expansion of global health financing3.

We cannot fail to mention the issue to with the increased variety of exhibited international

agencies that has the extraordinary flourishing of the organizing phenomenon since 1919 that has

vastly extended the range of existing organizations, considered according to their basic types, the

nature of the subject matter with which they deal, and the kinds of activities in which they

engage. International organizations today are non-governmental, inter-governmental, and

perhaps even supra-national; they are quasi-universal and regional, multipurpose and specialized,

security-oriented and welfare-oriented, regulatory and developmental in objective; they pass

resolutions upon almost every conceivable subject, collect information, sponsor research and

publication, convene conferences, formulate conventions, raise and allocate funds, initiate and

manage programs, provide advice, impose sanctions, and employ diplomats, soldiers, physicians,

and agronomists. Their concerns range from boundary disputes to plant diseases, from tariff

barriers to weather forecasting. An even further development has been seen in the progressive

involvement of most sates in these institutions where their major power today comes from the

number of international memberships that they have by the score, and even so provisional,

fragile, beleaguered, and preoccupied a state as the Republic of South Vietnam had an observer

status at the United Nations and full membership in several of its organizational offshoots, as

2
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Financing Global Health 2012: The End of a Global Age? (2013).
3
Gartner & Kharas, supra note 1, at 113.
well as most of the specialized agencies. The management and coordination of national

participation in international organizations is a burgeoning responsibility of governments. In the

contemporary world politics these institutions have come to govern more issue areas at an

increasing depth of regulation4 and thus have become more central to the distribution of vital

material and immaterial goods because it sis through them that decisions about the recognition of

states and non-states actors are made or decisions about military and judicial interventions are

made it where financial loans, aid or emission rights are distributed, limitations to the possession

and use of strategically important weapons are set and that states can build a reputation as

members of the international society. These institutions have also grown to work against the

increasing levels of inequality that is witnessed in the world right now and they have done this

by redistributing capital to less powerful members of international society. For instance, the

inclusion of civil society groups in negotiations has been a step in this direction; support by

International institutions like the International Labor Organization for decolonizing the global

order would also constitute a measure geared towards a partial transformation of the stratification

system5. The growth and development of the international institutions has taken some ride along

and has sometimes proven to be of the benefit in our contemporary world because we least say

how would the world today be without them and as they continue to develop so as their roles

continue to grow.

REFERENCES

Alvarez, José E. (2006): “International Organizations: Then and Now”, in: The American

Journal of International Law, 100(2), 324–347.

4
Alvarez, José E. (2006): “International Organizations: Then and Now”, in: The American Journal of International
Law, 100(2), 324–347.
5
Maul, Daniel (2012): Human Rights, Development and Decolonization. The International Labour Organization,
1940-70. International Labour Organization (ILO) Century Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
David Gartner & Homi Khaeas, Scaling Up Impact: Vertical Funds and Innovative Governance,

in GETTING TO SCALE HOW TO BRING DEVELOPMENTSLOUTIONSTO MILLIONS OF

POOR PEOPLE (Laurence Chandy, Akio Hosono, Homi Kharas & Johannes Linn eds,2013).

Gartner & Kharas, supra note 1, at 113.

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Financing Global Health 2012: The End of a Global

Age? (2013).

Maul, Daniel (2012): Human Rights, Development and Decolonization. The International

Labour Organization, 1940-70. International Labour Organization (ILO) Century Series.

Palgrave Macmillan, London.