As globalisation increases interdependence health becomes a subject of global governance, posing new challenges to the present global governance mechanisms. The authors explore two areas in which new mechanisms of global governance of health have emerged in the first decade of the 21st century: firstly, international assistance to finance healthcare and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and secondly, the Social Protection Floor which aims to ensure basic social guarantees for all. They argue that human rights can help to combine and strengthen these mechanisms, serving as a guide for a true partnership between people across borders, rather than merely a set of norms imposed upon states. Through a Framework Convention on Global Health, the Global Fund could become the cornerstone of a global social protection regime and act as an incentive for compliance with the Social Protection Floor.