Achieving the health-related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals and addressing a pandemic like COVID-19 requires a strong, results-focused WHO at the centre of the global health architecture, accountable to its 194 Member States and capable of providing leadership in many areas, from trusted information and advice, to establishing partnerships to achieve more equitable health outcomes, leveraging the expertise and resources of partners and strengthening advocacy for health among sectors, actors and all levels of government.

To demonstrate its accountability for results, WHO developed a results framework to show the secretariat’s contributions to the Triple Billion targets, used delivery stocktakes to identify and track progress and support to countries and reported annually to its governing bodies.

The secretariat demonstrated strong leadership in global health during the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinating and convening interconnected networks and a wide range of partners and working to promote health at the highest political levels, nationally, regionally and globally.

As part of the COVID-19 response, WHO acted as a moral authority for equity in access to vaccine and a trustworthy source of information, leveraging its network of over 150 country offices, building broad coalitions to ensure solidarity and action, keeping the general public and Member States engaged and establishing new partnerships. WHO has 70 million followers on social media platforms and broadcasted over 200 press briefings, over 100 live social media interviews and 70 episodes of “Science in 5” videos, to name a few of its communication products. WHO’s COVID-19 websites have had over 1.2 billion visits.

WHO has been described as the “spinal cord” of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT- A), an initiative that pools the resources of several organizations to ensure equitable distribution of new COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostic tests and therapeutics in countries. Through ACT-A, political and financial networks provided medical countermeasures in record time, with WHO leading sectors and agencies and coordinating with countries. WHO also provided leadership through its technical authority, evaluating new COVID-19 vaccines and diagnostics for safety and efficacy, setting guidance and tracking trends in the disease.

WHO has also provided leadership by underlining the centrality of health for achieving sustainable development, as envisaged in Agenda 2030, in Member States, the United Nations and beyond. WHO has convened partners at global, regional and national levels, engaged in various international (such as the G20 and G7) and regional fora and led on health-related issues in countries at the highest levels of government, ministries of health and other sectors, as well as civil society and the media, fostering partnerships to ensure an aligned country impact.

Through the WHO-led Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (SDG3 GAP), 51 countries are now benefitting from better aligned and coordinated support from 13 multilateral agencies for equitable, resilient recovery towards SDG 3. The SDG3 GAP helped to strengthen WHO’s role at the centre of the global health architecture and put United Nations reform into practice. The SDG3 GAP addresses four incentives (joint funding, joint monitoring, joint evaluation and joint governance) with pilot tests of approaches to strengthen collaboration. These will now be scaled up to fully leverage multilateral partnerships to accelerate achievement of the Triple Billion targets in countries. See the SDG3 GAP progress report for 2022.

Partnerships and joint advocacy were increasingly used to promote health during the biennium. WHO continues to extend its wide array of partners, which now includes the Commonwealth Secretariat, the European Investment Bank, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Women in Global Health, St Jude’s Research Hospital, the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee, as well as faith leaders in Religions for Peace. WHO and the State of Qatar have pledged to make the FIFA World Cup 2022 healthy and safe.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO organized meetings of its governing bodies to ensure its accountability to its 194 Member States and to stress its legitimacy as an inclusive institution. Strengthening of leadership, governance and advocacy were sharply focused on supporting every country to obtain results. “Stocktaking” of delivery in the transformed corporate processes of planning and monitoring performance ensured that WHO resources were used to implement important actions (on leadership, technical support and its normative role) to deliver impacts in countries.