World Health Organization and Early Global Response to HIV/AIDS: Emergence and Development of International Norms

Abstract

There have been remarkable coordinated efforts by major donor countries in the international community to grapple with HIV/AIDS epidemic. I claim, from the constructivist perspective, that the norms of the global response to AIDS motivated the funding by reshaping and redefining donors identity and preferences. I trace the process of how the WHO played a role in developing the norms at the very early stage of the pandemic. The analytical focus lies in the four stages of norms development: sharing information and enhancing awareness, constructing perception and orchestrating collaboration, establishing norms in the United Nations system, and implementing norms through mobilizing and strategizing. I examine the chronology of the WHO activities with the official documentation pertaining to the unprecedented global health crisis.