World Health Assembly: La Francophonie pleads for more equity

The major annual meeting of global health, organized in Geneva by the WHO, was an opportunity for the Francophonie to reiterate its positions through two formal Declarations expressed, for one, by the OIF and, for the other other, by the Group of French-speaking Ambassadors. 
Facing the Ministers of Health of the 194 Member States of the UN and a gathering of senior international and national officials, the Permanent Representative of Senegal, Ambassador Coly Seck, called on States to continue their efforts to achieve equity at the heart of the work aimed at the adoption of an international legal instrument on pandemics and the amendment of the International Health Regulations of 2005, two international law instruments of capital importance for global public health.
The GAF also welcomed the progress made on the 14th General Program of Work of the WHO, the global health strategy for the next four years, calling for consensus regarding its adoption.
These exhortations were reinforced by the Representative of the OIF to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, Henri Eli Monceau, during an intervention also focused on the relevant actions carried out jointly by the OIF and the WHO within the framework of their cooperation formalized in 2021.
Finally, particular emphasis was placed in these French-speaking declarations on the importance of respecting multilingualism in the work of the WHO; an essential condition to ensure inclusiveness and equity in all the Organization’s actions.