Dear colleagues and friends,

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us all many lessons.

One of them is that civil society organizations play a vital role in supporting the communities they represent to protect and promote their own health, based on reliable information.

The pandemic has exposed a huge deficit of trust between people and governments and public health institutions, including WHO.

People don’t simply believe what they’re told; it depends who’s telling them.

Your voices are trusted in your communities; and equally, your communities trust you to use your voices to advocate for their needs, to shape policy, and to hold governments and institutions to account.

The fact is, WHO and our Member States simply cannot achieve our goals universal health coverage, address health emergencies, and promote healthier populations, without the active engagement and participation of civil society.  

Working as partners, WHO and civil society organizations can make the impact of our efforts far greater than the sum of their parts.

When I started as Director-General five years ago, one of my first priorities was to increase WHO’s engagement with civil society, and we have made good progress.

But we have more work to do. We’re just starting.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many civil society organizations reported having little or no involvement in the response.

So we started a series of regular dialogues with civil society organizations to find ways for us to work together to improve access to health services.

At the same time, WHO set up a project to provide funding to grassroots organisations and youth for community engagement on COVID-19.

Through this project we reached over 80 million people in 40 countries, many in vulnerable settings.

We are taking things further, with the launch of the WHO Civil Society Commission in mid- 2023, around the time of the next World Health Assembly. By the way, that’s when we will be 75, WHO’s 75^th anniversary, it will be a historic moment to mark engagement with civil society.

The Commission will have representation from a cross section of civil society organizations, from a wide range of countries and communities.

I encourage civil society organizations to apply to participate in the Commission.

We need you.

Thank you all once again for your commitment to protecting and promoting the health of your communities.

I look forward to hearing your ideas about how WHO can play a more constructive role, and also your vision for the role of civil society in global health, as we work together for a healthier, safer, fairer world.

I thank you.