Sustainably Financing the World Health Organization

Abstract The Covid 19 pandemic catalysed interest from the international community to sustainably fund the World Health Organization ( WHO ). Though given fresh impetus, the WHO ’s financing dialogue has a history that has attracted minimal scholarly attention. To address this knowledge gap, a narrative literature review of the WHO ’s financing for the period 2009–2024 was conducted. One hundred and thirteen documents were reviewed from which eight core themes were identified: flexibility, predictability, duration, focus, vulnerability, alignment, contingency and realism. The review recounts how successive Director Generals of the WHO have attempted to reform how the organization is funded. It finds that sustainably financing the WHO is more complex and reliant on inter-dependent variables than current definitions would suggest. Ongoing efforts to align donor and secretariat financing priorities have the potential to increase rather than reduce vulnerability. Furthermore, realist assumptions present a barrier to sustainably financing the WHO that we need.