ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies trends in the health and foreign policy commitments made by the Group of Eight (G8) summit, its finance, foreign and G20 ministerial forums, and by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meeting. It identifies patterns in the member's compliance with these commitments. The chapter considers the causes of this compliance, identifying factors coming from the international system, notably the role of multilateral organizations (MOs), members domestic societies, their states and the leaders own control. It charts ways in which the member governments, with their different domestic constitutional systems and government structures, implement their commitments back home. Since 1996, health and foreign policy has added the heads of the major MOs, including the World Health Organization (WHO). Powerful leaders use their summits simultaneously to make many commitments in both fields and in the closely related ones of human rights, climate change and development, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
