WHO - 75th World Health Assembly - EU Statement: Item 12 – Programme budget 2022–2023 General Programme of Work results framework

Chair,

Director General,

Excellencies,

Colleagues,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of the European Union and its member states.

We thank the secretariat for the proposed revision to the Programme Budget for 2022-2023.

We notice with appreciation that the proposed revision is aligned with the five strategic priority areas outlined by the Director-General at the Executive Board.

We acknowledge the importance of strategic priorities 1, 2 and 3, namely:

1.       investments in strengthening the nexus of primary health care, health system resilience and pandemic preparedness;

2.       strengthening country offices; and

3.       lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We take note of the estimated budget increase for 2022–2023 of 434.6 million USD derived from resolution WHA74.7, related to inter alia: building new capabilities required to discharge WHO’s mandate to coordinate and strengthen global health security,

leading efforts to prevent, prepare for, detect and respond to health emergencies,

We welcome the proposal to allocate additional resources to strengthen the accountability, compliance and risk management functions in WHO with a focus on strengthening the prevention and response to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (PRSEAH).

We note that the increase of the current budget by $120 million to $604.4 million after the last meeting of the Executive Board, an increase of 14 %.

We deeply believe that no one should be left behind and support larger focus on country and regional level. But we would appreciate to learn why these additional needs could not have been foreseen earlier? Furthermore, we would like to understand the foreseen budgetary implications of the current increases and expected investments in longer terms. We also look forward to more details about the expected increases in allocations to Billions 1 and 3.

We are also interested in an explanation why re-prioritization is not possible within the current budget and request that WHO further examine possible synergies.

In this context, we were pleased to note that WHO was able to realize savings of more than US$ 100 million from 2019 to 2021. (Doc. 75/7)

Nonetheless, the remaining gap between the programme budget and available resources bears the risk that parts of the budget may not be implemented or that parts will need to be reprioritized.

We hope that the recommendations of the Working Group of Sustainable Financing will be adopted at this WHA in order to improve the sustainability of WHO’s funding in the future so that it can react to needs. Strengthening WHO is only possible if the WHO has the necessary capacities to implement its mandate. This requires sustainable and predictable resources. The EU and its Member States believe in a strong WHO and will continue to support the organization.

Finally, on the extension of the GPW, we note that the Secretariat’s report in document A75/8 was submitted only three days before WHA. We support the decision A75/8Rev.1 as recommended by PBAC, which ensures further consultation with member states ahead of EB152.

Thank you.