WHO Executive Board passes resolution on MDG 4 &5 accountability
Welcomes Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health
Resolution: WHO’s role in the follow-up to the high-level plenary meeting of the sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (September 2010)
19 JANUARY 2011 | GENEVA - The WHO Executive Board (EB) has adopted a resolution regarding the follow-up to the high-level plenary meeting of the United Nations on the review of the Millennium Development Goals. The Resolution welcomes the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health launched at UNGA and the establishment of a related Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health.
The resolution outlined the following objectives of the Commission:
- Determine international institutional arrangements for global reporting, oversight and accountability on women’s and children’s health, including through the UN system. This accountability framework will encompass results and resources, and identify the roles of the different partners involved;
- Identify ways to improve monitoring of progress of women's and children's health while minimizing the reporting burden on countries, including a set of core indicators, efficient investment in data generation and better data sharing;
- Propose actions to overcome the main challenges to accountability at the country level, including strengthening of country capacity and addressing major data gaps such as the monitoring of vital systems;
- Identify opportunities for innovation provided by information technology that will facilitate improved accountability for results and resources, and propose ways of ensuring these opportunities are harnessed to bring maximum benefits to countries.
The Resolution requests the WHO Director-General to: ensure the effective engagement of all key stake holders in the work of the Commission and report to the Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly on the progress of the work of the Commission.
The resolution was proposed by Australia, Israel, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Senegal and Serbia and Slovenia on behalf of the Member States from the European Union, and incorporated amendments from Timor Leste.
Several countries spoke to and supported the resolution during the EB discussions, including among others: the African states represented by Mauritius, Bangladesh, Canada, the European Union member states represented by Hungary, India, Japan, Mongolia, Norway, Oman, Russia, Timor Leste, the United States, and Yemen.