Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions
Introduction Since the 1970s, voluntary contributions have become an increasingly important component of WHO’s budget. As voluntary contributions tend to be earmarked for donor-specified programmes and projects, there are concerns that this trend has diverted focus away from WHO’s strategic prioriti...
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BMJ Publishing Group
2023-04-01
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| Series: | BMJ Global Health |
| Online Access: | https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011232.full |
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| author | Andrew Harmer Jonathan Kennedy Obichukwu Iwunna |
| author_facet | Andrew Harmer Jonathan Kennedy Obichukwu Iwunna |
| author_sort | Andrew Harmer |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Introduction Since the 1970s, voluntary contributions have become an increasingly important component of WHO’s budget. As voluntary contributions tend to be earmarked for donor-specified programmes and projects, there are concerns that this trend has diverted focus away from WHO’s strategic priorities, made coordination and attaining coherence more difficult, undermined WHO’s democratic structures and given undue power to a handful of wealthy donors. In the past few years, the WHO Secretariat has pushed for donors to increase the amount of flexible funding they provide.Methods This paper aims to add to the literature on WHO financing by constructing and analysing a dataset based on figures extracted from WHO documents for the period 2010–21. It aims to answer two questions: who funds WHO and how flexible is that funding?Results Our analysis demonstrates that in the last decade voluntary contributions have steadily increased as a proportion of WHO’s budget, from 75% at the start of the period to 88% at the end. High-income countries and donors based in high-income countries provided 90% of voluntary contributions in 2020. Surprisingly, the share of voluntary contributions provided by upper middle-income countries was consistently less than the share by lower middle-income countries. Furthermore, in terms of their share of voluntary contributions, we found that upper middle-income countries contributed the least proportion of their gross national income to WHO.Conclusion We conclude that WHO remains constrained by the conditions attached to the vast majority of funding that it receives from its donors. Further work on how to flexibly fund WHO is required. We recommend that the Agile Member States Task Group on Strengthening WHO’s Budgetary, Programmatic and Financing Governance continues the work of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing by focusing on the incentives that determine donor support for specified and flexible voluntary contributions. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-d941abfdda694091beca8c99bfba71e4 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2059-7908 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-04-01 |
| publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
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| series | BMJ Global Health |
| spelling | doaj-art-d941abfdda694091beca8c99bfba71e42025-02-01T08:50:10ZengBMJ Publishing GroupBMJ Global Health2059-79082023-04-018410.1136/bmjgh-2022-011232Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributionsAndrew Harmer0Jonathan Kennedy1Obichukwu Iwunna2Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Centre for Public Health and Policy, Queen Mary University of London, London, UKData Science, Medical School, Swansea University, Swansea, UKAccident and Emergency Department, Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Crewe, UKIntroduction Since the 1970s, voluntary contributions have become an increasingly important component of WHO’s budget. As voluntary contributions tend to be earmarked for donor-specified programmes and projects, there are concerns that this trend has diverted focus away from WHO’s strategic priorities, made coordination and attaining coherence more difficult, undermined WHO’s democratic structures and given undue power to a handful of wealthy donors. In the past few years, the WHO Secretariat has pushed for donors to increase the amount of flexible funding they provide.Methods This paper aims to add to the literature on WHO financing by constructing and analysing a dataset based on figures extracted from WHO documents for the period 2010–21. It aims to answer two questions: who funds WHO and how flexible is that funding?Results Our analysis demonstrates that in the last decade voluntary contributions have steadily increased as a proportion of WHO’s budget, from 75% at the start of the period to 88% at the end. High-income countries and donors based in high-income countries provided 90% of voluntary contributions in 2020. Surprisingly, the share of voluntary contributions provided by upper middle-income countries was consistently less than the share by lower middle-income countries. Furthermore, in terms of their share of voluntary contributions, we found that upper middle-income countries contributed the least proportion of their gross national income to WHO.Conclusion We conclude that WHO remains constrained by the conditions attached to the vast majority of funding that it receives from its donors. Further work on how to flexibly fund WHO is required. We recommend that the Agile Member States Task Group on Strengthening WHO’s Budgetary, Programmatic and Financing Governance continues the work of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing by focusing on the incentives that determine donor support for specified and flexible voluntary contributions.https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011232.full |
| spellingShingle | Andrew Harmer Jonathan Kennedy Obichukwu Iwunna Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions BMJ Global Health |
| title | Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions |
| title_full | Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions |
| title_fullStr | Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions |
| title_short | Flexibly funding WHO? An analysis of its donors’ voluntary contributions |
| title_sort | flexibly funding who an analysis of its donors voluntary contributions |
| url | https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011232.full |
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