Opening up decision making at the World Health Organisation

See also
WHO leadership video conference report

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World Health Organization (WHO)

Starting on 20 January 2003, the 32 members of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Executive Board began deliberating on which of seven possible candidates should be chosen as WHO's new Director General. By the end of the day, the Executive Board picked a shortlist of just five candidates.

On 28 January, the Executive Board announced that it had chosen Dr Jong Wook Lee, a South Korean doctor who currently heads WHO's programme to stop tuberculosis as the new Director General. They based that decision on a set of criteria set out in a World Health Assembly resolution. They had a one-hour interview with each of the shortlisted candidates. Then, in closed sessions, they voted on who to select. The voting continued until Dr Lee emerged with a majority of the votes, after the candidate with the lowest votes dropped out in each round.

The name of the selected candidate will be sent to the 192-member World Health Assembly (WHA) that meets in May. The WHA participants are expected to confirm the selection choice of the Executive Board. In the 55 year history of WHO, no Director-General choice has ever been overturned by the WHA.

Is it an open process? Is there a way for WHO stakeholders to make their views heard? Is there even a way for those with an interest in the process to even get to hear the views, the vision, the hopes, the dreams, the initial ideas of the candidates?

Sadly, it is not an open and transparent process. And it is a process that is potentially at risk of being manipulated. It is also a process that excludes the views of many of the key players in global health with whom the new Director General will have to work.

In a world where increasing attention is being paid to the good governance of countries and to major international institutions, it is time for a change at WHO. It is time that fresh approaches were tried, that new voices were heard, and that the views of all of WHO's many stakeholders were consulted.

On 19 January 2003, a coalition representing more than 300 civil society organisations helped contribute to that change by hosting an international videoconference that was broadcast around the world to provide a forum for the candidates to outline their views and to be questioned by a public audience.