Your Excellency Ambassador Julien Thöni,
UNOG Director-General Tatiana Valovaya,
WFUNA Secretary-General Aziel Philippos Goulandris,
Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
It is a great honour to welcome you to WHO for the WFUNA World Congress. Welcome to our house.
By the way, it opened this year after four years of renovation, and I thank Switzerland for its support.
It is a particularly special occasion, as we celebrate 80 years of the People’s Movement for the United Nations.
I thank WFUNA, its members and the national United Nations Associations around the world for 80 years of work to bring the United Nations closer to people.
Over the past 80 years, the UN and the multilateral system have delivered incredible results for our world.
Nowhere is that more clear than in global health.
In the past 80 years, life expectancy globally has increased by more than 25 years, with the biggest gains in the poorest countries.
Smallpox has been eradicated, and polio is on the brink.
More than 150 million lives have been saved through routine immunization.
Just in the past 25 years, tobacco use has fallen by one third, maternal mortality has fallen by one third and child mortality has more than halved.
I could go on and on.
None of this was achieved by one country or one organization alone.
It was achieved through cooperation.
That is the power of multilateralism.
And yet, as we know, multilateralism is under pressure.
And the world is becoming more divided.
But the challenges we face have not become smaller.
They have become bigger.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed cracks in the international order, and widened them.
But it also showed why, in the face of an international threat, there is no alternative to international cooperation.
The pandemic taught the world many painful lessons.
In response, WHO Member States negotiated and, at the World Health Assembly last year, adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement – a landmark instrument of international health law.
The negotiations were often difficult, but in the end, countries were able to compromise and find common ground.
And in that sense, the Agreement is a strong demonstration that multilateralism is alive and well, and that it still works.
As you know, Member States are still negotiating an annex to the Agreement, the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system, which will operationalize the Agreement.
Although differences remain, I have every confidence that countries will find common ground, just as they did in the negotiations for the Agreement itself.
They recognize that pathogens have no regard for the lines that humans draw on maps and call borders.
Neither do climate change, antimicrobial resistance, misinformation or many of the other threats to our health and our societies.
No country can address these challenges alone.
That is why the United Nations remains indispensable, and so does WFUNA.
For 80 years, WFUNA and the national United Nations Associations have helped connect the United Nations with the people it serves.
One of the strongest examples of our partnership is youth engagement.
Together, WHO and WFUNA are creating opportunities for young people to engage in and to help shape the future of global health.
I would like to personally thank WFUNA Secretary-General Aziel Goulandris for always championing young people and for the trust and support he has brought to our partnership.
Thank you very much, Secretary-General.
We are now preparing the fourth edition of the Global Model WHO, which will take place here at WHO in November.
Through the Global Model WHO, young people from around the world engage directly with global health challenges and experience what it means to negotiate, find common ground and build solutions together.
We also collaborate on educational programmes that empower young people to engage in global health and shape its future.
And WFUNA is also a valued partner in amplifying the work and voice of the WHO Youth Council.
Like WFUNA, WHO also celebrated an 80th milestone recently:
Last month marked 80 years since the WHO Constitution was signed in New York City, on the 22nd of July 1946 – although it did not come into force until the 7th of April 1948, the date we celebrate as World Health Day.
Like WFUNA and the United Nations, WHO was born in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the realization that the only alternative to global conflict is global cooperation.
That remains as true today as it was in 1948.
We live at one of the most divided, divisive and dangerous times since then.
Which is why multilateralism is more important than ever.
Just as our world is changing, so multilateral institutions including the UN and WHO must change with it. Change should be a constant.
Over the past nine years, we have undertaken a sweeping set of reforms called the WHO Transformation, with major changes to our financing, strategy, structures, culture and ways of working.
Likewise, we are also engaging actively in the UN80 reforms;
And we are hosting a joint process on reforming the global health architecture.
As you know, last year was very difficult for WHO, and for global health in general.
All international organizations live with a tension between serving the interests of all Member States, while avoiding undue influence from any single Member State.
Sometimes, that comes down to a choice between losing funding or losing integrity.
That’s the choice that WHO faced many times.
We chose integrity, and we took measures to deal with the financial consequences.
WHO cannot be killed by lack of funding, but lack of integrity. That’s why we made that choice.
We have now reached a point of stability, and we are moving forward, more focused on our core mandate, and more independent.
As an impartial UN agency, our duty is to serve all nations, based on science and evidence, without fear or favour for any nation.
That is the UN the world needs, and that is the UN for which WFUNA has advocated for 80 years.
As we celebrate 80 years of WFUNA, the question is not whether multilateralism has a future.
The question is how we make it stronger, more trusted and more connected to people.
For 80 years, WFUNA has helped carry the promise of “We the peoples” forward.
Let us work together to carry that promise forward for the next 80 years.
WHO is proud to stand with you.
We need your voice.
We need your partnership.
And we need you to help make the case for multilateralism – now, and for the generations to come.
Because when we work together, we can achieve what no country can achieve alone.
We don’t have another option other than cooperation and solidarity.
I thank you.