International Organization Reform: Challenges and Opportunities

This essay examines the necessity of reforming international organizations, focusing on the World Health Organization (WHO). It explores the WHO's structure, objectives, and the need for reform to enhance its efficiency in addressing global health crises. The essay highlights the challenges the WHO faces, including the need for stronger sanctions, a clarified mandate, increased funding, and broader technical expertise. It also discusses the challenges in implementing these reforms, such as member state conflicts and financial constraints. The essay concludes by emphasizing the critical role of the WHO in safeguarding global public health and the importance of overcoming these challenges to ensure its effectiveness. The author provides multiple sources to support the arguments.

International
Organisation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
International organisation is that inter governmental organisation which is established by
the treaty or any other instrument which is governed by the international law. These are
composed of member states primarily but may also include any other entities like other
international organisation. The main aim of these organisation is to help in setting the
international agenda and mediation of the political bargaining (Dingwerth and et. al., 2019).
They facilitate the coordination and the cooperation among the member nations and also promote
global initiatives which are aimed at reducing the inequality. This essay shall cover the reasons
for reforming or replacing any one international organisation, how reform or replacement can be
made and what challenges such reform or replacement can face.
MAIN BODY
World Health Organisation is the specialised agency of United Nations which is
responsible for the international public health. The constitution of the World Health Organisation
(WHO) establishes the governing structure of the agency and the principles which states the
main objective of it which is the attainment of the highest possible health level by all the people.
The organisation is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with the six semi autonomous offices
at regional level and around 150 field offices all around the world. WHO was established on 7th
April, 1948 which is also the World Health Day. This organisation have played the leading role
in achieving the public health like for instance eradication of the smallpox, development of
Ebola vaccine and many other. But there is a need to reform this international organisation
because health is at utmost priority for all the people so the World health organisation needs a
reform so that public health can be improved in more efficient manner. Reforms and the
improvements are fundamental for every organisation so that they can serve the needs of the
changing environment. As there are new health emergencies emerging in today's time, so it is
very important that the process and structure of the organisation changes with changing demands
and needs of the society. As there are disease outbreaks, health crises and epidemics, it is
important to combat them as they have international importance (Copelovitch and Pevehouse,
2019). For instance, The World Health organisation have earlier failed to respond timely to the
Ebola epidemic so it is important that there must be improvements in the internal and

independent assessments of the organisation so that they can respond to the health crisis,
epidemics and the disease outbreak.
In order to respond to the questioning of the relevancy of World health organisation, it is
important to have several reforms in the working of the organisation so that it can function
efficiently for the global population. As the covid !9 pandemic is still not over, when the worst of
crisis is over, there will be time to reflect on the mistakes (Guidry and et. al., 2017). As WHO is
the only true democratic health agency at global level, there are some serious reforms which
must be undertaken so that the organisation can regain its legitimacy. Some of the reforms are
illustrated below-
The world health organisation must have strong sanctions. As it is unable to assert its
authority, WHO have to rely on some strategies so that it can gain the cooperation of the
countries. The regulation of international health mandate currently that the government must
report any of the public health emergencies which are at international concern and cooperate
with WHO to take any action but the organisation have no legal ability to enforce the same. So
the regulations of the WHO must be reformed which must include the enforceable sanctions
against any country which fails to comply with any mandate.
The mandate of WHO must be clarified and also narrowed. There is a broad scope of
WHO in theoretical sense which states that all the activities which may improve the population's
health at world level are under the preview of World health organisation. Instead, the
organisation must focus on such activities which can bring the value truly. The focus on few
activities or topic will bring quality in the working of WHO which will ensure speedy response
to the health problems and will result in quick solutions for the same.
The budget of WHO must be increased. Many experts have said the limited budget of
WHO is less than budget of any USA hospital which is the main culprit of the WHO failing. The
share of WHO unmarked funding is also low as the membership dues only represent only less
than 20% of the WHO total budget. The low budget becomes hurdle in decision making for the
organisation as it has only 30% control on the whole budget. So WHO must take majority
authority in controlling the budget so that it can make independent decisions for the benefits of
global population (Naznin and et. al., 2021).
The governance of WHO must be reformed so that it can facilitate inclusion of alternative
voice like civil society. The WHO must focus to broaden the base of governance without even

losing its democratic focus. This will result in open governance where there will be transparency
in maintaining the working of the organisation.
The World Health Organisation must broaden its technical expertise. WHO should
maintain the technical focus but also broaden the expertise in order to include more of the input
from the political scientist, lawyers, urban designers, information technology specialist and the
logisticians. On other side, the technical focus of the WHO may legitimate the recommendations
of public health and ensure the diplomatic impartiality and bringing new expertise in technical
nature which can expand the authority of WHO on the topics which are outside the realm of
public health but may have the strong impact on it like social determinants of health.
None of the above mentioned reforms are easy to implement. There is a strong
commitment required from the members states and also the extensive coordination among all
member state so that the changes can be accepted by all and implemented successfully. But
during the time of economic recession and the increased nationalism, the implementation of
reform is very difficult. The World Health organisation must work on the reforms so that it can
become the guardian of the public health at global level (Jing and Liu, 2020). For instance, the
reforms may be challenged by USA as the country has recently accused the organisation of being
the puppet of the China. The previous cold dispute the countries may become a challenge for the
WHO to make the changes in its structure and process. There is significant discrepancy between
the member state, their financial contributions and also their expectations. There is also the
constant struggle for the staff to mobilise the resources as it is being forced to juggle the
competing priorities.
There is a lack of accountability in the organisation where the staff of the WHO does not
take any personality responsibility for any of the crisis or the epidemic. This shows that how
unaccountable the staff members of the organisation is when it comes to taking the responsibility
to make the reform.
As WHO is a member state run organisation, every country who is its member has to vote
which is their supreme decision making body but the priorities of the member states are often in
conflict with the major donors which are in control of the different resources like USA. Also
WHO have the 30% budget control, the agenda of the organisation is guided by the priorities of
the donor. So the major challenge to implement the reform can be made from the side of member
states (Amri, 2020).

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above essay that the international organisation is the global
organisation which is established through the treaty or any other instrument. It is governed by the
international law. Improvements and reforms are fundamental as it helps in easy adaptation of
the environmental changing. World Health organisation is one such organisation which requires
continuous reforms due to changing needs of the environment. It is important for WHO to bring
reform in its structure so that it can efficiently respond to the global health crisis and save the
health of global population. There are many reforms which are required by WHO which includes
strong sanctions, narrowed mandate, open governance, increase funds and the broad technical
expertise which will help the organisation to grow and work for achieving the purpose of its
establishment. With reforms there comes many challenges which increases the risk for the WHO
to implement the reform. Like for instance, WHO is a member state which runs with votes so the
major challenge can be the supreme authority of decision making to these nations which may
become hurdle in implementing reforms.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Amri, M., 2020. A review of the World Health Organization’s discourses of equity. European
Journal of Public Health, 30(Supplement_5), pp.ckaa166-275.
Copelovitch, M. and Pevehouse, J.C., 2019. International organizations in a new era of populist
nationalism.
Dingwerth and et. al., 2019. International organizations under pressure: Legitimating global
governance in challenging times. Oxford University Press.
Guidry and et. al., 2017. Ebola on Instagram and Twitter: How health organizations address the
health crisis in their social media engagement. Public relations review, 43(3), pp.477-
486.
Jing, W.Z. and Liu, M., 2020. World Health Organization's response mechanisms for COVID-
19. Zhonghua liu xing bing xue za zhi= Zhonghua liuxingbingxue zazhi, 41(9), pp.1385-
1389.
Naznin and et. al., 2021. Smokeless tobacco policy in Bangladesh: A stakeholder study of
compatibility with the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco
Control. Drug and Alcohol Review.