Thank you so much for joining us today to launch the WHO CSO Commission, through this inaugural first meeting of the Steering Committee.
I thank Lisa Hilmi and Ravi Ram for agreeing to be the first co-chairs, and for orchestrating the work of the Steering Committee. We look forward to working with the co-chairs very closely, and with all of you.
This is a very important moment for WHO, and for global health.
We know from our experience in so many areas that listening to and responding to the voices of the communities we serve is essential to properly addressing the health challenges they face.
For example, during the Ebola outbreak in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2018 to 2020, certain burial customs presented a high risk of transmission.
But simply removing bodies from families to protect them created significant community resistance, and resulted in some families hiding bodies for fear they would not be able to say goodbye in the traditional way.
Through careful engagement with civil society and communities, we were able to design burial practices that were both safe and dignified, and acceptable to the communities.
Because of the strong participation of communities and civil society we managed to stop it in DRC.
This was a key step in helping to bring the outbreak under control.
There are countless other examples in other disease areas.
Strengthening WHO’s work with civil society has been a key priority for WHO, as part of the transformation we have been making since I began as Director-General in 2017.
Over the past six years, we have transformed our strategy, our processes, our operating model, our culture, our financing, our workforce, and our approach to partnerships.
Traditionally, WHO has been “shy by design” and too risk averse in the way we interact with non-state actors, including civil society.
But we cannot achieve targets as ambitious as the Sustainable Development Goals without engaging civil society in a coordinated and organized way.
That’s why we have set up the WHO Civil Society Task Force for Tuberculosis, the WHO Advisory Group of Women Living with HIV, the WHO Civil Society Working Group on Noncommunicable Diseases, and other ways to engage with civil society on specific health issues.
I have also held regular dialogue with civil society on topics including long COVID, healthy ageing, sexual and reproductive health, traditional medicine, climate change, sustainable financing and more, to hear directly from them on their challenges and proposed solutions. Civil society works directly with communities, so they know the problems and they often have the keys to the solutions.
We have also established a Youth Council, and increased our engagement with the private sector, while maintaining appropriate safeguards against conflict of interest.
We have come a long way, but we are still at the beginning of the journey. Maybe we are still shy by design, but surely, we are making progress.
We recognise that we must make engagement with civil society more systematic across the three levels of WHO and establish ways to listen to the voices of the people that WHO serves. Especially the country level is every important, because that’s where we get results. That why we are here.
We have set up the WHO Civil Society Commission, the first of its kind, to bring civil society from different backgrounds together to advise us and work with us so that we can learn from you and be guided by your ideas and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals which are way off track.
The Civil Society Commission will also provide an opportunity for CSOs to learn from each other, and to make their voices heard more loudly and clearly.
The Civil Society Commission is the central element of WHO’s commitment to engage with civil society.
We have three aims for this work:
First, I encourage you to set the priorities, and I’m looking forward to seeing which issues and topics you identify. We should start from listening to you, please don’t hold back. You should tell us what you think is the right thing to do.
Second, we seek your guidance to develop the WHO CSO engagement strategy.
And third, I hope to engage with you on key organizational priorities, such as the development of WHO’s next five-year plan – the 14th General Programme of Work – sustainable financing, the Investment Round and the pandemic accord.
By the way, on assess contributions, our Member States have made a historic decision to increase our assessed contributions by 20 percent.
Without sustainable financing I don’t think we can achieve the ambitious targets we have set for ourselves.
Thank you all once again for your commitment to WHO, and for improving the way we engage with civil society.
I look forward to hearing your assessment on the status of WHO’s engagement with civil society, and your proposals and recommendations on how we can work better together for a healthier, safer, fairer world.
I thank you.