Honourable ministers, excellencies, distinguished delegates, and dear colleagues. On behalf of IOAC - the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, I would like to thank you for inviting our committee to this important meeting and providing us with the opportunity to congratulate the Working Group on Sustainable Financing for their remarkable achievements, and incredibly hard work over the last year.
As you are aware, our committee is mandated to provide oversight and monitoring of WHO’s work in health emergencies, to guide the WHE Programme’s activities, and to report our findings to the World Health Assembly. WHO’s finance, especially for enabling the work in health emergencies, is one of the key areas of work that the committee monitors.
We warmly welcome the draft report of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing, and we strongly endorse the recommendations put forward by the Working Group to the Executive Board. We are fully aligned with the Working Group on Sustainable Financing.
Our findings and recommendations with regards to WHO finance so far, have been presented to the governing bodies through nine reports. Over the past five years, IOAC has expressed its deep concern that the Organization faces a chronic financial challenge, namely, lack of predictable and flexible funding, competing priorities, heavy dependence on a limited number of donors and donor fatigue.
And the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to serious questions on the adequacy of the WHO financing and the WHE budget.
We also observed that the establishment of the WHE Programme, has raised WHO’s profile as an operational entity for health emergencies, but the human resources capacity of WHO country offices, remains weak.
Sustainable financing is a key priority, as it can provide financial security for WHO country offices to focus on building capacities in order to support Member States on the ground.
Sustainable financing is the prerequisite for WHO to continue evolving into the Organization the world needs.
For this reason, we are thrilled to see the recommendation to increase assessed contributions to cover 50% of the Programme Budget of the next biennium to be reached by 2028-2029, at US$ 2 182 million total spread across 194 Member States.
The IOAC applauds this proposal and commends the Working Group on sustainable financing for their ambitious and diligent vision.
It is high time to equip WHO with the predictable and flexible funding that is so critically important to enable the Organization to carry out its mandate and meet growing demands, including the prevention and response to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
We believe this is also an opportunity to address the significant discrepancy between Member States’ financial contributions and their expectations of WHO, particularly the demand on the WHE Programme to respond to emergencies and humanitarian crises, let alone a global pandemic.
As we have underscored in our previous reports, it is critically important, to ensure the WHO operations are transparent, and free of collusion, fraud and corruption. We would like to see a robust oversight function on financial risk management, especially as WHO’s role grows in major emergencies, as well as the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to advise the Director-General in this regard and report back to Member States.
Finally, we would like to reiterate that WHO needs financial independence, with secure, sustainable, predictable and flexible funding to continue saving lives and to keep the world safe. We urge Member States to make a collective commitment and attain the ambitious targets set out in the Working Group’s report, as they are fundamental to enhancing WHO’s ability to fulfil its role.
On behalf of the IOAC, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to Mr Björn Kümmel, Chair of the Working Group on sustainable financing for inviting us today and we wish you fruitful deliberations today, and over the next 2 days of your meeting. Thank you.