What is the world signing up for with the WHO?

The WHO website states that there are two main sources of funding for the organization. That is member states paying assessed contributions, along with further voluntary contributions. The second source of funding comes from what the WHO calls “other partners”.

According to Statista, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest contributor to the WHO. The foundation gave the WHO US 751 million in 2020-2021. Another contributor, the GAVI Vaccine Alliance gave the WHO US 451 million in 2020-2021.

Unelected representatives with no sense of democratic accountability

Most of the officials within the WHO are bureaucrats with little or no experience within democratic government. They are unelected officials not responsible to any electorate. Thus, with no accountability towards the people, it is highly likely that the genre of people within the WHO will not have much empathy towards the people as stakeholders.

The current Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus doesn’t have any democratic background, even though he served as a former Ethiopian health minister. Tedros was a member of the Marxist-Leninist paramilitary Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which has on and off been labelled as a terrorist organization.

The WHO’s democratic credentials are very low. People around the world must think very deeply about giving an organization like the WHO such powerful and mandatory authority over their lives.