May 2016
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the international organisations representing the world’s physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and physical therapists.
Together, we form the World Health Professions Alliance (WHPA), representing over 26 million health professionals in more than 130 countries.
We welcome the framework of engagement with non-state actors. While its creation and consensus seeking was a lengthy process, we are pleased to see that most of our comments have been heard and implemented in this final draft.
However, we regret that in the final draft of the framework, the benefits and, therefore, the value of the status of a non-governmental organisation in official relations with WHO, are modest compared with non-state actors without this status.
The paragraph 40bis grants the Member States electronic access to a summary report on due diligence of each NSA and their respective risk assessment on engagement. Member States also have access, on demand, to the associated full report through a remote secure platform.
For the sake of transparency, we recommend that the non-state actors themselves should have access to their own risk assessment summary report.
Given the efforts made in developing this framework, we call for an assessment of its impact, for instance, in four years’ time, through a public and independent report on the framework’s effectiveness in preventing the risks of engagement as described in point 8 (page 9) and, as well, its impact on the engagement with non-state actors. Such a report could also include a set of recommendations to the WHO governing bodies.
Finally, our organisations would like to reaffirm our interest in engaging with WHO to effectively advance and promote public health globally.
Thank you for your attention.