Executive Summer Course on Global Health Diplomacy: “Geneva, a Global Health Hub for Multilateralism and Diplomacy"

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to contribute to the Executive Course on Global Health Diplomacy offered by the Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre. The Graduate Institute is a cornerstone of International Geneva and a cherished partner for UN Geneva. I know that you will benefit from all that this institute – and this city – have to offer.

You could not be in a better place – at a better time – to study global health diplomacy. 2017 is a year of profound change worldwide including in global health. Last month, the World Health Assembly gathered in the Palais des Nations to elect – in a more open process than ever – a new Director-General of the World Health Organization: former Ethiopian Health Minister Mr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. For the first time, global leadership on health will pass to an African – highlighting the sharing of global leadership and responsibility. However, his arrival also comes at a time of great uncertainty about the future of the WHO and of multilateralism in general.

In many ways, global health can serve as an excellent vantage point from which to survey the challenges confronting multilateralism. While the last decades yielded significant progress in several fields, these benefits were not uniformly shared between or even within states. Between 1990 and 2015, for example, maternal mortality fell worldwide by 45 percent, yet 24 countries – including South Sudan and the United States – bucked the global trend by reporting rising rates. Far too many are being left behind and these inequalities fuel conflict and instability.

Furthermore, it is apparent that all the great issues of today or tomorrow are global and that they far exceed the capacity of any one state or organization to tackle alone. For example, environmental pollution, which accounts for more than 12.6 million deaths per year, knows no boundaries or nationalities. This is also true for pandemics, like that of the Zika virus, which spread to more than 84 countries in less than three years.

This brings us to the third threat to our collective efforts: a governance crisis at every level of authority: whether local, national or global. Socio-economic inequalities between and within states play a central role in the growing public mistrust of existing institutions. Reinforcing this sentiment are the failures that come about when we attempt to solve the problems today with institutions and bureaucratic mentalities left over from the Postwar era. In the field of global health, the Ebola outbreak that devastated parts of West Africa between 2014 and 2016 made plain the tragic repercussions of governance failure. Without adequate resources and overwhelmed by the scale of the unfolding disaster, local and national health systems collapsed. For its part, the international community failed to respond quickly enough with adequate resources. In the face of this emergency, a number of states tried to wall themselves off from the threat, a popular response these days that only serves to aggravate the problem.

What can we do in the face of these persistent challenges? Our response must be collective and rooted in a shared vision for the future. This vision is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted by our Heads of State in 2015. This agenda is indivisible and universal and represents our collective roadmap to a safe, fair and sustainable future. At the heart of this project are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which one – the third – is dedicated to health and well-being. Building on the progress made under the Millennium Development Goals, this goal sets new targets for combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as for childhood and maternal mortality. The goals are also interdependent and indivisible. In other words, progress on the health SDG bring windfalls to all the other goals. It is indispensable, for example, to guarantee equal access to health services to reduce poverty. In the same vein, the other SDGs also impact health. For example, promoting sustainable consumption – the twelfth goal – has a role in the struggle against so-called “super bugs” by promoting a rational use of antibiotics.

In other words, the Sustainable Development Goals are holistic and their success depends on a close collaboration between various actors that were previously isolated in their respective fields. Home to over 100 international organizations, 178 representatives of Member States, some 400 NGOs, over 250 permanent missions and other delegations, a dynamic private sector and prominent academic institutions, the Lake Geneva region is the ideal place to facilitate this kind of cross-cutting collaboration across traditional divides. Just last month, two Geneva-based institutions – the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees – partnered to improve the health of the world’s more than 65 million refugees. This effort not only bridges the divide between the topics of health and refugees, but demonstrates Geneva’s role and capacity in overcoming the divide between agencies focused on development and humanitarian aid.

For its part, the Global Fund and similar Geneva-based entities, such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and the Stop TB Partnership, are examples of partnerships between governments, international organizations, private donors and NGOs. These unique multistakeholder partnerships and entities – made possible by International Geneva – have had a demonstrable impact because they combine the competitive advantage to obtain superior results. GAVI, for example, has already immunized nearly 320 million children in 10 years. The research institutes and hospitals of the Lake Geneva region are part and parcel of the collaborative success of International Geneva. The Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG), for example, participated intensively in the test phase of the first promising vaccine for Ebola.

Of course, information exchanges and synergies are not limited only to health and neither is International Geneva. Since the creation of the Red Cross over 150 years ago, Geneva has nurtured a unique ecosystem that has allowed it to become the hub for collective action on humanitarian issues, human rights, commerce, peace, technology, Internet governance, environment, among so many others. In fact, if New York is the political hub of the international system, Geneva is the operational hub for a vast range of issues, including the SDGs. This is because Geneva is home to both the hardware and software needed to achieve the SDGs. The hardware is the administrative support, legal framework and existing infrastructure that makes action possible. The software is the knowledge, expertise and new cooperative mentality that flourishes on the banks of Lake Geneva. This is the conviction that knowledge and expertise are not there to be stockpiled and hoarded, but to be shared and disseminated. Our United Nations Library in Geneva, for example, is a treasure trove of information that is readily available to researchers online and helpfully classified by each SDG. Just for the health and well-being goal, it has over 50 million documents. I invite all of you to take advantage of this free and open resource.

If the decisions made and work done in Geneva often go unnoticed, their effect resonates around the world every day, impacting each and every one of us. Every interaction with your smartphone, for example, is made possible thanks to standards and rule negotiated inside the International Telecommunications Union. The vaccines that protect us from terrible diseases are regulated by the WHO.

The international community, Swiss authorities and their partners recognize that International Geneva is a priceless asset. Their efforts will allow International Geneva to remain a place where the nations of the world can come together through innovative partnerships to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.

Thank you.