What To Watch Out For in 2025 For Global Health Geneva
Newsletter Edition #243 [The Files Brief]
Hi,
There is a propensity to give in to unbridled optimism at the beginning of the year, but it is best to be anchored in, and humbled by realities.
In this first edition, we bring you sort of the Geneva Health Files outlook for 2025 - the year when multilateralism is expected to be shaken up. As is our wont, we look at global health from the lens of science, politics, diplomacy, trade and governance.
Notwithstanding the near dystopian outlook for global health, we hope that 2025 will be a good year. (If you are as old as I am, you will know that it is not as bad as you think, it is usually worse!)
No matter what, nothing will dissuade policy wonks, health workers from doing what is in front of them. We draw inspiration from them.
Thank you for reading!
If you find our work valuable, become a paying subscriber. Tracking global health policy-making in Geneva is tough and expensive. Help us in raising important questions, and in keeping an ear to the ground. Readers paying for our work helps us meet our costs.
Our gratitude to our subscribers who ensure we stay in the game!
Cheers!
Priti
Feel free to write to us: genevahealthfiles@gmail.com
Find us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/genevahealthfiles.bsky.social
I. THE FILES BRIEF
What To Watch Out For in 2025 For Global Health Geneva
Here are some key expected developments in 2025, that we think could have an impact on global health policy-making in Geneva. Some are more immediate, while others, although seemingly far away could set in motion processes and dynamics that will eventually affect how global health is governed. After all, public health is also about politics, money, and power, apart from the science.
This is a non-exhaustive list, and, in no particular order of importance.
Conflict Strikes Home: WHO DG’s Close Shave In Yemen
The bewildering video of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of WHO, being rushed to safety after Israeli strikes on Yemen’s airport, in the final days of 2024, illustrated the gruesome reality that dominated much of the year that has gone by. (Israeli authorities have reportedly denied that the UN team was a target.)
The incident also sets the tone for 2025. Seldom has geopolitics, quite literally struck so close to a governing public health leader. That this comes on the back of egregious, and repeated attacks on health care facilities, on health care workers, on humanitarians, and patients not only in Gaza, but also elsewhere in the world, is sobering. International cooperation and diplomacy are in smithereens.
The attack that exposed WHO’s top official to the risk of being injured or worse, could play as an undercurrent for global health discussions in Geneva this year. (Israel is part of WHO’s Executive Board that will meet in the coming weeks in early February 2025.)
Such conflicts show that foreign policy has increasingly usurped essential policy space in global health.
We are not able to comment on the nature of the failure of intelligence of such an attack, see statement from WHO on this here. But do keep in mind, that WHO and its leader have been one of the most forceful voices against the atrocities in Gaza and in the wider Middle East. WHO has repeatedly called for ceasefire and peace.
Member states of WHO, have to face up to the ugliness in these conflicts. There can be no more looking away.
(See HPW report on the incident here).
The Trump Effect in Geneva
While the world braces for Donald Trump to assume office later this month, the implications for global health will likely be stark, even in the midst of the myriad changes in geopolitics that this shift in power symbolises. One of our commentators has described it as global health insecurity.
Apart from immediate consequences for WHO in terms of its financing, with the U.S. ranking as one of the most significant donors, uncertainties on American support to global health will also create pressures on financing for the sector in general - think replenishments of other global health agencies. This will be the year when all efforts will be made to fill the vacuum as a result of a potential American retreat away from global health financing. No clear statement has yet emerged from the incoming Trump administration on the matter of WHO, but the Financial Times highlighted late last year that members of his transition are pushing to pull the US out of WHO “on the first day of the new administration”. (We are tracking this unfolding story and will report on it.)
Scholars, notably Andrew Harmer, takes a different tack on this issue. He cautions against the overstatement of WHO’s reliance on the U.S., and says that Trump is free to walk away from the institution, and suggests that WHO member states could pay an additional $ 2.6 million a year to plug the hole if Trump’s team decides to severe support.
(Also see Devex: EU aid’s annus horribilis and The year of UNcertainty)
Geopolitics Will Put Multilateralism In Global Health To Test
We reported last year that notwithstanding the significant pressures on financing, the other key risk will be on the future of the three-year-old efforts to establish a new Pandemic Agreement. For the moment, while countries remain committed to concluding negotiations by May 2025, five months is a long time in the life of a highly uncertain world.
While countries succeeded in reaching consensus on the amendments to the International Health Regulations in June 2024, agreeing on a new instrument to govern pandemics is being seen as crucial litmus test for multilateralism in global health. Aside from American engagement in these negotiations, it will be up to other countries to close divergences, and reach an agreement on these crucial talks.
Last year, we published a hundred editions tracking global health negotiations, and will continue to report closely on these discussions.
Avian Flu
All eyes on the U.S., also for other reasons, including the now expanding outbreak of H5N1 avian flu strain in dairy cattle. The scientific community is on alert trying to understand the consequences for humans.
According to a recent statement (update from December 20, 2024) from the joint FAO/WHO/WOAH public health assessment of recent influenza A(H5) virus events in animals and people, “At the present time, based on available information, FAO-WHO-WOAH assess the global public health risk of influenza A(H5N1) viruses to be low, while the risk of infection for occupationally exposed persons is low to moderate depending on the risk mitigation measures in place and the local avian influenza epidemiological situation.”
Negotiations On First Ever UN Tax Treaty
The woes around financing crunch for development is ubiquitous. One often hears innovative financing as a panacea to treat some of the shortfalls on traditional financing. But rarely one hears about innovative taxation.
Early this year, most countries will get together to start negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNTC). The negotiation process for the new convention is now set to begin in February 2025 and end in 2027, according to European NGO network Eurodad.
Commentators for Geneva Health Files, have already tipped the UN tax treaty as a “a structural transformation that has the potential to deliver significant financing and increase health and social equity.”
(Also see this Nature editorial on SDG financing: 2025 must be the year when the rules of global finance are reformed)
Biodiversity Talks
Countries will gather at the FAO in Rome in February 2025 to work towards the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF).
A key area of discussion will be “a new Resource Mobilization Strategy aimed at securing $200 billion annually by 2030 from all sources for biodiversity initiatives and reducing harmful incentives by at least $500 billion per year by 2030. Parties will also explore the potential establishment of a global financing instrument for biodiversity, designed to mobilize and distribute funding effectively. Current funding comes from bilateral arrangements, private and philanthropic sources, and dedicated funds such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) including its Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) and the Kunming Biodiversity Fund (KBF),” according to a recent statement from the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Climate Crises and Health
After WHO’s testimony at the climate hearings at the International Court of Justice late lats year, the approaches to address the climate crises will be woven even closer than before. (Air pollution alone, claims 7 million lives annually).
Brazil will lead on COP30 in November 2025, in a year where emissions are projected to peak, just as countries will negotiate the next generation of climate pledges.
WHO has already made a case for integrating health into Nationally Determined Contributions. Also see the health argument for climate action, a recent special report.
See Science on this: The science stories likely to make the biggest headlines in 2025 “The rapid rise of electric vehicles, renewable energy, and reforestation has jostled with the countervailing forces of the energy-gobbling data centers powering artificial intelligence and rebounding fuel demand after a pandemic lull.”
International Trade Will Encounter Strong Headwinds
Elected to office again, DG of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has hopes on what she refers as “re-globalization”. It is hard to optimistic in light of the tariff-warfare indicated by the incoming Trump administration. From scrambling to resuscitate the defunct dispute settlement system at international trade’s only rule-making body, to addressing existential challenges, WTO members will continue to make efforts to maintain the relevance of the institution amid difficult geopolitics.
Disinformation Looms Bigger
The consequences of disinformation are disproportionately large for democracy, conduct of elections and the likes. But it is even more critical for how people consume and process information around health.
Expect this to get worse, with even greater ferocity, as cashing in on disinformation continues to be commercially attractive for rogue actors.
Did a colleague forward this edition to you? Sign up to receive our newsletters & support Geneva Health Files!
Global health is everybody’s business. Help us probe the dynamics where science and politics interface with interests. Support investigative global health journalism.