event
Global Health Centre
Monday
19
May
GHC_WHA_Week_2025_square_img

Soft war: Geopolitics and financing at the WHO

International Geneva Global Health Platform
, -

Hybrid: Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Geneva Graduate Institute, Maison de la paix and online.

Geneva Health Week 2025 - WHA 78 side event

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Description

At this year’s World Health Assembly, geopolitics and financing will be at the forefront of many discussions and difficult decisions ahead. This has been precipitated by the United States of America’s stated intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and global health more generally, raising existential questions and triggering a crisis at the WHO. Yet all of this has happened before. Understanding how the Organization, health diplomacy, and the broader constituencies behind them have negotiated crisis and change since the WHO’s founding in 1945 illuminates the challenges facing global health today – and offers clarifying insight into the road ahead.

This event will shed light on how geopolitics and financing have challenged WHO’s role and work at various critical points in its history and how this has impacted not only the organisation but global health in general. It will also explore what lessons we can draw for today’s challenges.

 

Speakers

Opening & Closing Remarks: Vinh-Kim Nguyen | Co-Director, Global Health Centre, Professor, Anthropology and Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute

  • Ilona Kickbusch | Founder and Chair, International Advisory Board, Global Health Centre
  • Laurence Monnais | Professeur ordinaire, Histoire de la médecine et de la santé publique, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Université de Lausanne (UNIL), Institut des humanités en médecine (IHM)
  • Joseph Kutzin | Senior Fellow, Results for Development
  • Keith Krause | Director, Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Professor, International Relations & Political Science, Geneva Graduate Institute; Chair Curt Gasteyger in International Security and Conflict Studies

Moderated by Daniela Morich | Senior Manager and Advisor, Governing Pandemics Initiative, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute

Access speakers' biographies.

 

Organised by

The Global Health Centre's International Geneva Global Health Platform, and the Geneva Graduate Institute's Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding.

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