SOC108: Civil Society Advocacy Research Paper 2022

Running head: CIVIL SOCIETY ADVOCACY 1
SOC108: Civil Society Advocacy
Name
Institution

CIVIL SOCIETY ADVOCACY 2
SOC108: Civil Society Advocacy
Introduction
In the contemporary world, people's welfare has been treated with much consideration
when defining the success of any specific country. Development, in the current world, is
measured through the lens of the welfare of the people. Living standard indices have been the
major tools to measure development in countries. The need to establish civilized and developed
societies is the sole motivation that drives civil societies' actions in many countries. Civil society
advocates attempt to promote sustainable welfare of the people and the world's ecosystem. These
advocates range from human rights, peace, and justice to environmental advocates. Each group
of these advocates specifically aim at improving the welfare of certain individuals. For instance,
the target groups of human rights' civil society advocates are to ensure humans enjoy certain
predetermined and unalienable rights. Peace and justice advocates aim at facilitating peaceful,
fair and just societies. Environmental civil society advocates, on the other hand, attempt to create
a harmonized ecosystem where each element in the world can coexist in harmony. This paper
attempts to investigate the efforts and actions played by Australian Doctors International to
establish curb global health inequalities. The paper aims at pinpointing pieces of evidence that
the civil society is poised to reduce health inequalities caused by political, socio-cultural,
economic and institutional malfunctions across the globe.
Overview
Australian Doctors International is an international non-governmental body which seeks
to improve health outcomes, especially in rural and poverty-stricken areas. The civil body

CIVIL SOCIETY ADVOCACY 3
provides improved health care for patients who occasionally receive substandard health care.
Australian Doctors International (ADI) headquarters are based in 550C Sydney Road, Seaforth,
2092 New South Wales, Australia. The non-profit organization comprises of professional
medical doctors who volunteer their services towards providing better healthcare conditions to
underprivileged members of the global society (Ng-Kamstra, et al., 2016). The group's mission is
providing improved healthcare by working with local partners which would end up promoting
and upholding the universal rights of better healthcare. The group mainly focuses to improve the
health conditions of people in impoverished communities. The organization is also involved in
civil society advocacy to help people affected by health inequalities due to political, socio-
cultural, economic and institutional factors.
Political Factors
For countries that experience poor leadership and governance in the world, the health
sectors in the countries usually operate at poor conditions. Doctors and nurses in typical
countries are underpaid, work in poor medical conditions. The countries are occasionally
affected by medical staffs' strikes, with the medical union leaders always appearing in headlines
releasing complains and demands. When the national governments fail to come into an
agreement with the doctors, the doctors and medics usually call for national strikes. The people
in such countries are the major victims of these sequential circumstances. To help in reducing the
unbearable circumstance of seeing dying patients due to medical absence, ADI doctors intervene
for the people's benefit. According to Smith & Stewart (2017), health advocacy groups are very
instrumental in reducing the impact of poor governance. Walton-Roberts (2015) adds that highly