Who Shows Up, Who Decides? Delegation Size & New Dynamics of Global Health At The World Health Assembly 2025 [Guest Essay]
Newsletter Edition #276 [The Files In-Depth]
Hi,
“Presence is power. Wealth matters, but politics matters even more”: authors of today’s guest essay assert. In their refreshing and lucid analysis, global health experts Jaime Manzano Lorenzo and Adrián Alonso Ruiz from a Spanish civil society organization, have mapped delegation size and presence at the recently concluded World Health Assembly in Geneva.
They say that delegation size can be seen as a proxy for political will, technical capacity, and influence.
These experts are affiliated with Salud por Derecho, a Madrid-based civil society organization working towards affordable health technologies and reforms of pharmaceutical policies.
This highly recommended piece is great reading for anyone wishing to understand the shift underway in global health and geopolitics.
I am most grateful to these experts for making their research available to our readers. Get in touch with them with your feedback!
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Priti
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I. WHA78: ANALYSIS
Who Shows Up, Who Decides? Delegation Size & New Dynamics of Global Health At The World Health Assembly 2025
By Jaime Manzano Lorenzo and Adrián Alonso Ruiz from Salud por Derecho
Salud por Derecho is a Madrid-based civil society organization working to ensure universal access to affordable health technologies and to reform pharmaceutical policies globally.
Get in touch with the authors here: jaime.manzano@saludporderecho.org.
Geneva – the capital of global health diplomacy becomes a hive of activity every year in May during the World Health Assembly. The WHA convenes member states to discuss the organization’s policy priorities and budget, approves resolutions that build on norms, issue recommendations, reports and even votes on contentious political matters that underpin health.
This WHA was special, considering the adoption of a resolution to approve the final text of the Pandemic Treaty ( the treaty will enter into force later and is not yet open for signatures). In addition, the budget cuts due to the US withdrawal from WHO, and a reduction in aid from many other donor countries, is causing a major earthquake in how WHO and the Global Health system as a whole operates and is financed.
In addition to the official agenda inside the Palais des Nations – the venue of the Assembly, dozens if not hundreds of meetings and side events take place on the sidelines of the official proceedings. For this 2025 World Health Assembly, we have analyzed two aspects that we think reveal some of the power dynamics operating in Geneva during WHA: delegation sizes and event hosting.