Regional organisations are moving away from traditional market-based goals to embrace
issues of welfare and social development, yet little is known what role, if any, regional
organisations can play in policy formation that is conducive to embed alternative approaches
to development into national and international strategies and normative frameworks. This
paper explores how Southern regional organisations and regionalisms as advanced by the
Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) are framing and advancing pro-poor norms and goals. While not coherent
citizenship-centred projects of regionalism, SADC and UNASUR have manifested new
ambitions regarding poverty reduction and the promotion of welfare and are developing
modalities conducive to embed these goals in national and global policy-making. The analysis
focuses on the specific area of health, a proxy to poverty reduction in both regional
organisations, to argue that Southern regional organisations, while neglected partners in
global governance of development, are can promote and prescribe standards for social
development and poverty reduction; and act as forum for the advocacy of equity and rights.
In this context, there are three key messages from this paper: (i) poverty needs to be brought
in to the study of regional integration and regional governance; (ii) the efforts of regional
organisations to reduce poverty need to be taken more seriously in the literature and in
practice; and (iii) regional organisations can be seen as engines of norms, spaces for advocacy
and effective normative corridors affecting policy at national and international levels of
governance.
