First, deliver a strong Pandemic Agreement. Covid-19 taught us that global threats demand a global response. Just as countries have come together to agree on other instruments of international law to address common threats, such as the Geneva Conventions, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Paris Agreement, the International Health Regulations and the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, so it is clear that countries must agree on a shared approach for confronting the shared threat of pandemics. Although countries have made progress, some of the most important issues remain unresolved. We urge G20 members to take the lead in resolving those issues, finding a middle ground and reaching a consensus by the end of this year, if possible. It can still be done. Second, deliver a strong and sustainably financed WHO, at the centre of the global health architecture. The Covid-19 pandemic showed why the world needs a global health agency – and why it created the WHO in 1948. The G20 has consistently recognised its central role. And yet the way countries finance the WHO is inefficient, with short-term, unpredictable and inflexible funds that distort its budget and prevent it from retaining the best talent and delivering the long-term, tailored health programming that countries need. WHO member states have acknowledged this. At this year’s World Health Assembly, they adopted a new, ambitious global health strategy to save 40 million lives over the next four years – the Fourteenth General Programme of Work – with an overarching mission to promote, provide and protect the health of the world’s population. MOBILISING RESOURCES AND POLITICAL WILL Delivering on that mission requires a strong and sustainably financed WHO. This is why our member states are supporting the launch of the first WHO Investment Round – an effort to mobilise the predictable funding that we need to do our work over the next four years. Countries and partners have started making pledges at a series of events that will culminate at the G20 Rio Summit, where leaders will make further pledges and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will announce the results. We know that we are making this
request at a difficult time, a time of competing priorities and limited resources. But as the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated, when health is at risk, everything is at risk. Investments in the WHO are therefore investments not only in healthier populations but also in more equitable, more stable and more secure societies and economies. Third, deliver a more peaceful world. In Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and elsewhere, the WHO and our partners are doing our best to meet the health needs of the people we serve. But what those people need more than aid is a ceasefire, a political solution and peace. There is no health without peace and no peace without health.
Sometimes the problems of our world can seem insurmountable, and achieving the Sustainable
Development Goals a distant fantasy. But humans are nothing if not resilient”
TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected director-general of the World Health Organization in 2017 and re-elected for a second term in 2022. He is the first person from the WHO African Region to serve as the WHO’s chief technical and administrative officer. He served as Ethiopia’s minister of foreign affairs from 2012 to 2016 and minister of health from 2005 to 2012. He was elected chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Board in 2009, and previously chaired the Roll Back Malaria Partnership Board, and co-chaired the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Board. @DrTedros : who.int
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globalgovernanceproject.org
2024 — G20 BRAZIL: THE RIO SUMMIT
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