Funding is key for the WHO and the stability of UN agencies.
Gulrajani 22 [Nilima, Sebastian Haug, and Silke Weinlich; January 26; Senior Research Fellow in the Development and Public Finance team at ODI. She has over 20 years of experience researching bilateral aid organization and reform; Research focuses on countries that sit between the traditional groups of ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’ in international development politics. Worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China and Mexico; Senior Researcher at the German Development Institute. Member of the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation with the Global South research programme, where she leads a project on the UN development system; ODI, “Fixing UN financing: a Pandora’s box the World Health Organization should open,” https://odi.org/en/publications/fixing-un-financing-a-pandoras-box-the-world-health-organization-should-open/]//av
It is no secret that the World Health Organization (WHO) is grossly underfunded. As its Executive Board meets this week to discuss how it can become the global health institution the world needs and wants, all eyes will be on whether the WHO can finally solve the problem of its precarious financing.
But there is even more at stake in this debate than the WHO’s own financial health. If a financial fix can be found for what ails the WHO, there will likely be ripple effects for the ways member states fund entities across the United Nations system whose funding structures are equally shaky. It is the possibility of these downstream consequences – including the potential liabilities that action at the WHO could place on reform efforts in other UN entities – that is one of the greatest political challenges to fixing the WHO’s balance sheet.
Nevertheless, this is a Pandora’s box worth opening. The lack of predictable and flexible finance for a sickly UN multilateral system is a problem in urgent need of a solution.
The WHO financing debate and its wider relevance for UN entities
If member states are serious about wanting a more effective UN system for managing an expanding list of global challenges, individual entities must be solidly financed to ensure their independent capacity to act. For the WHO, this requires a sustainable source of funding to enable it to fulfill its essential global health functions, including the creation of norms and standards based on the best technical knowledge and evidence, as well as preventing, detecting and responding to disease outbreaks such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, only about 16% of the WHO’s $6 billion budget over the biennium 2020–2021 came from a predictable, stable funding source. This regular budget is made up of obligatory member state dues, allocated in a UN formula tabled every three years in the UN General Assembly. This formula weights contributions according to a country’s economic strength and population size, with adjustments made on the basis of income per capita and debt burden and is intended to ensure fair financing obligations across countries of dissimilar means. Currently the formula’s minimum contribution stands at 0.001% of the regular budget, while its maximum contribution is 22%.