Chair, Dr Aspect Maunganidze,
Vice-Chair, Dr Ali Haji Adam Abubakar,
Members of the PBAC,
Dear colleagues and friends,
Good morning, welcome back to WHO, and as it’s still January, I think I’m still allowed to say Happy New Year to you all!
A special welcome to the new PBAC members from Egypt, Nepal, Panama, Poland, Spain and Zimbabwe.
Thank you all for your commitment to this committee, and to your WHO.
The work of PBAC is more important now than ever.
As you know, the past year has been one of the most challenging in WHO’s history.
Over the past 12 months we have navigated a painful but necessary process of prioritization and realignment.
Cuts to WHO’s funding left us facing a significant financing gap for the 2024–25 biennium.
WHO’s financial prudency in recent years gave us the opportunity to take a careful, strategic approach to minimize the impact of these cuts and protect our core work.
At this meeting a year ago, you considered a proposed budget for the 2026–27 biennium of US$ 5.3 billion.
The Executive Board then reduced it to US$ 4.9 billion.
Although that seemed realistic at the time, the outlook for international aid continued to deteriorate, so in March I proposed a further reduction to US$ 4.2 billion, which the World Health Assembly approved in May.
In order to protect the core work of the Organization within the scope of our reduced budget, we undertook a process of prioritization, identifying the most essential functions, in line with the Fourteenth General Programme of Work (GPW 14).
This resulted in new streamlined and aligned structures across the three levels of the Organization.
We merged departments and divisions, relocated some functions, and at headquarters we cut our senior leadership team in half and the number of directors almost in half.
Each office was then given a budgetary envelope, and asked to define a sustainable structure to fit within that envelope, in accordance with the outcome of the prioritization.
Once that was completed, each office made recommendations on staff that should be mapped or matched to positions.
These were reviewed by the Ad-hoc Review Committees, which included a representative of our Staff Association, and were ultimately approved by me.
Although there are still a few issues to finalize, we have now largely completed the prioritization and realignment.
We have reached a position of stability and we are moving forward.
We have mostly maintained our gender balance and regional representation, and our global workforce is now slightly younger than it was.
This has been a difficult and painful process, as you can imagine, but we believe it has positioned our Organization for future success, making it future-fit and future-ready.
I express my deep gratitude to all staff who have left or are leaving for their service and dedication, and I wish them every success in the next chapter of their lives and careers – and also to express our readiness to use staff using the talent pool initiative that we have started.
Of course, no process is perfect, and we acknowledge the legitimate concerns that some staff have raised about it.
We take those concerns seriously, we have addressed many of them and we continue to do so.
We have designed, communicated and implemented the changes we have made based on the principles of transparency, fairness and humanity.
Importantly, the changes we have made as part of the Transformation over the past eight years have helped to cushion the impact of last year’s shock.
When we began the Transformation in 2017–2018, we identified WHO’s over-reliance on a handful of donors as a major risk, and we have taken several measures to address that risk.
Most significantly, we proposed – and in 2022 the World Health Assembly approved – a plan to progressively increase assessed contributions to 50% of the base budget, from just 14% at the time.
Member States approved the first increase in May 2023, the second increase last year, and the next three increases are scheduled for approval in May 2027, May 2029 and May 2031. Five instalments in total; two down, three to go.
We cannot overstate the significance of this decision as a long-term strategic solution for the stability, sustainability and independence of WHO.
In addition, we took a series of other steps to broaden our donor base, including by establishing the WHO Foundation, publishing our first Investment Case, and conducting our first Investment Round.
If we had not taken these steps, we would have been in a far worse situation than we were. The increase in assessed contributions that you decided helped to minimise the impact.
Our objective throughout this process has been to safeguard the core functions of the Organization and align our financial and human resources with those functions, while minimizing separations to the greatest degree possible.
If we had not taken this approach, we estimate that we would have had to separate about 3000 colleagues globally.
Instead, we have managed to reduce the number of separations to 1241. This has been achieved in two main ways:
First, 1162 staff have left or will be leaving through retirement, voluntary early retirement and natural attrition.
Second, about 600 positions have been preserved as a result of the increase in assessed contributions.
This demonstrates why the historic decision to increase assessed contributions was the right decision, and why Member States must continue on that path – the same road.
It’s a strategic long-term solution that will make WHO more independent, more financially sustainable, and less vulnerable to shocks like the one we had last year.
It’s not about more money, it’s about sustainable, predictable funding that will help to prevent future shocks and protect WHO’s independence as an impartial, science-based organization – free to say what the evidence says without fear or favour. I think that’s what you want your WHO to be.
Thanks to the increase in assessed contributions, the Investment Round, the hard work of our teams and the generosity of Member States and other donors, we have now mobilized 85 percent of the resources we need for the base budget this biennium.
At one level, we are in a better position than ever before at this stage of a biennium.
However, because the majority of voluntary contributions remain earmarked, several areas of work remain underfunded, including emergency preparedness, AMR, health financing, climate resilience, determinants of health and risk factors.
And although 85 percent sounds good – and it is – the environment is very difficult and the remaining 15 percent will be hard to mobilise. This is the equivalent of US$ 660 million, as you will hear in presentations from my colleagues.
We therefore appeal to all donors to ensure not only that WHO has the quantity of funding it needs, but also the quality of funding to deliver on the priorities of GPW 14.
Although we have faced a significant crisis in the past year, we have also viewed it as an opportunity, because as you know, crisis brings clarity.
It’s an opportunity for a leaner WHO to become more focused on its core mission and mandate, including in the context of the UN80 reform initiative.
Our Transformation has already made a huge difference in sustainable financing and our country focus, but for us, change is a constant.
After all, the needs of the countries we serve are always evolving, so WHO must also continue to evolve.
The challenges and opportunities that countries face today – from climate change to artificial intelligence – are very different to the challenges and opportunities they faced in 1948, or even in 1998.
This means sharpening our focus on our core mandate and comparative advantage, doing what we do best – supporting countries through our normative and technical work – and leaving to others what they do best.
I therefore see the WHO of the future as leaner and even more focused, efficient, and fit for purpose: an organization with its independence protected and its financing secured, less vulnerable to shocks caused by shifting geopolitical winds.
That is exactly what our prioritization has aimed to do, building on the achievements of the Transformation that started in 2017–18.
I’m proud that throughout the past year, we have continued to deliver on our mission and mandate to promote, provide and protect the health of the world’s people, while doing the prioritization and realignment.
As you know, many other multilateral agencies, within and outside the United Nations system, have also been impacted by funding cuts, as have many of the countries we serve.
We continue to play a vital role in supporting those countries to sustain essential health services, while using the moment as an opportunity to transition away from aid dependency to a new era of sustainable self-reliance, based on domestic resources.
We look forward to continuing to support all Member States in the year ahead to address the challenges they face and take advantage of the opportunities before them.
This is a moment of change not only for WHO, but for the entire global health ecosystem.
There are now many discussions on reforming that ecosystem to ensure all partners leverage their comparative advantage, avoid overlaps and duplication, and that together we deliver value and results for the countries we serve.
We are proposing to bring those discussions together into a joint process to help transition to a leaner, more collaborative and impactful global health ecosystem.
We look forward to your advice and guidance on that and the other agenda items before you this week.
Once again, my thanks to this committee for your commitment to WHO, and to a healthier, safer and fairer world.
I thank you.