Germany, France push for WHO reform talks in September
BERLIN/GENEVA - Germany and France want to give more money and power to the World Health Organisation after the COVID-19 pandemic underscored long-standing financial and legal weaknesses at the U.N. agency, an internal document seen by Reuters shows.
"Not only during the current pandemic, it has become clear that the WHO partly lacks the abilities to fulfil this mandate," the document seen by Reuters said. The move shows the two countries' keen interest in an overhaul aimed at strengthening the WHO, despite talks on the matter with the United States collapsing earlier in August at G7 level over differing views about the reform.
The Franco-German reform plan is focused on strengthening the WHO, in part to empower it to be able to be more critical of member states if they do not honour global rules on transparency in reporting health and disease issues. Only a fifth of the agency's budget comes from member states' payments without strings attached. The remainder is raised through"short-term, unpredictable and largely highly specified voluntary contributions", the document said, in an apparent reference to the role of individual philanthropic funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Germany, France want more funding, power for WHO as part of sweeping reformsBERLIN/GENEVA (REUTERS) - Germany and France want to give more money and power to the World Health Organisation (WHO) after the Covid-19 pandemic underscored long-standing financial and legal weaknesses at the UN agency, an internal document seen by Reuters shows.. Read more at straitstimes.com.
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