기능주의 관점에서 본 세계보건기구의 설립과 역할

Abstract

Since its establishment in 1948, World Health Organization (WHO) has tried and facilitated international cooperation of public health under goal of the highest attainable and gained outcomes like eradication of smallpox and polio, turning itself into representative of international public health. However, there was discord between member nations during cold war era, and status of WHO experienced rise and fall after its establishment. WHO, representative international health organization, also has not been freed from influences from international regime changes, which means that discussion on internal causes of WHO functionings should be expanded more. In this study, functionalism was tested as one of international relations theory that tries to explain establishment and role of WHO. Especially, this study analyzed problems and problem-solving process that WHO had to face by using Imber`s five steps theory that arranged chronologically theory of Mitrany. We mainly investigated secondary source that described historic facts on rise and fall of WHO in terms of roles and functionings during establishment of WHO, cold war era, and international cooperation of public health. The roles of WHO were analyzed by selecting gains of WHO in post cold war era. The functionalism arrangement of Imber was appropriate to some extent in explaining establishment and role of WHO. The first step was International Sanitary Conference in 1851 that made nations to recognize international cooperation of public health, and second step was establishment of WHO that handles public health as an international organization. Recent cases of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and International Health Regulations showed that each nation agreed with an international norm that they had to cooperate each other to tackle infectious diseases and smoking, and this implies that these were emergence of global governance. This process was third step of Imber`s theory (nations had a gain from international cooperation would agree with expansion of authority of international organization). However, last two steps of theory are still not realized. The partial success of WHO was based on functional elements that WHO deals with non-political elements, human resources centering on professionals, and democratic decision making process. This essential and non-political characteristics mean that necessity of international cooperation catalyzed by WHO would continue despite of global governance era when global health governance get faced more challenges.