The Challenges of the World Health Organization: Lessons from the Outbreak of COVID-19

Abstract

The decisions adopted by the World Health Organization and the responses of its member states to the pandemic provoked by COVID-19 have revealed some of the challenges of this intergovernmental organization in its ability to provide efficient solutions to the health and health security problems of the international community at the beginning of the twenty-first century. WHO’s normative deficit has negatively affected the organization’s fight against the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The chronic financial deficit of this institution has also determined its failures to control and eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the persistent violations of the rules and recommendations, adopted under WHO’s auspices, and the lack of control and accountability mechanisms in its legal framework have induced the little success of the institution’s intents to contain the global COVID-19 crisis. WHO could only surmount these challenges and continue to play a crucial role as a leader forum for states’ international cooperation in health and health security matters, if its members accept to reform the organization’s legal and institutional design.