1st Edition
The World Health Organization Achievements and Failures
The World Health Organization (WHO) is undergoing a crisis of credibility and challenge. Having been subjected to a severe financial crisis and criticisms of its management of pandemics such as the H1N1 flu case and the outbreak of Ebola, with a new Director-General at its helm, it is an ideal time to review the WHO’s past and current achievements including on-going operations and reported failures. Whilst time is given to recurrent attacks on WHO performance, it is balanced by also highlighting the WHO’s leadership, its member states, and its influence on other actors, NGOs and business. As such, this study reviews the WHO’s actions in the most visible programmes such as SARS, H1N1, Ebola and also smallpox, malaria, onchocerciasis, polio and AIDS. The author also discusses the desirable balance between operational and normative functions and proposals for reform of the Organization.
Biography
Yves Beigbeder (Dr Public Law) has written many books and articles on international organizations, international secretariats, UN management, international criminal tribunals, international humanitarian non-governmental organizations, the World Health Organization (WHO), International Public Health and Business . He assisted the French Judge at the Nuremberg Trial in 1946 as a legal secretary. He later worked in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, then in WHO as a Human Resources and legal professional in WHO Regional Offices and in Geneva. After his retirement from WHO, he lectured on international organizations and WHO in universities in Geneva, Paris, St Louis, Boston and Vancouver. He is currently Legal Counsel for international civil servants in Geneva in their complaints to the ILO and UN Administrative Tribunals.
Dr Beigbeder is a member of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, the Union of International Associations, Regent of the International Association for Humanitarian Medicine Brock Chisholm, a member of the Executive Committees of the Association of Former International Civil Servants, the Association of Former (WHO) Staff Members, the Association of Former International Civil Servants for Development (Greycells).
Yves Beigbeder’s splendid scholarship comes at a pivotal moment for WHO—after its widely criticized response to Ebola. Will the Organization become the global health leader it was meant to be? Or will member states starve it of funding, as its capabilities wither? Yves Beigbeder’s important ¿book illuminates these vital questions¿, urging, rightfully, for a reenergized WHO to fight global health crises arising today and into the future. – Lawrence O’Gostin, Professor, Georgetown University and Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law.
