The US is halting funding to the WHO. What does this actually mean?

Trump announces US will halt funding to World Health Organization over coronavirus response

He first threatened to do so last week, accusing the WHO of mismanaging the spread of the novel coronavirus, and of not acting quickly enough to investigate the virus when it first emerged in China in December 2019.

Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, which is the WHO’s parent organization, described the pandemic as unprecedented in a statement Tuesday and acknowledged that there would be “lessons learned” for future outbreaks.

“Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” he said in the statement.

“But now is not that time … it is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus,” he said, urging unity in the face of a pandemic that has killed more than 126,000 people globally.

What is the WHO?
The WHO is a UN agency founded in 1948, only several years after the UN itself was formed. The agency was created to coordinate international health policy, particularly on infectious disease.

The organization is comprised of and run by 194 member states. Each member chooses a delegation of health experts and leaders to represent the country in the World Health Assembly, the organization’s decision and policy-making body.
The member states directly control the organization’s leadership and direction — the assembly appoints the WHO director general, sets its agenda and priorities, reviews and approves budgets, and more.

The WHO has regional headquarters in Africa, North and South America, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Western Pacific. There are more than 150 field offices globally, where staff on the ground work with local authorities to provide guidance and health care assistance, according to the organization’s website.

In the 70 years since its founding, the WHO has had its share of successes: it helped eradicate smallpox, reduced polio cases by 99%, and has been on the front lines of the battle against outbreaks like Ebola.

More recently, it is helping countries battle the dengue outbreak in South and Southeast Asia, providing local clinics and health ministries with training, equipment, financial aid and community resources.

But the WHO has also faced criticism for being overly bureaucratic, politicized, and dependent on a few major donors.

Where does it get its money?
The WHO is funded by several sources: international organizations, private donors, member states, and its parent organization, the UN.

Each member state is required to pay dues to be a part of the organization; these are called “assessed contributions,” and are calculated relative to each country’s wealth and population. These dues only make up about a quarter of the WHO’s total funding.

The rest of the three quarters largely come from “voluntary contributions,” meaning donations from member states or partners.

Of all the countries, the US is by far the largest donor; in the two-year funding cycle of 2018 to 2019, it gave $893 million to the WHO. Of this total, $237 million were the required membership dues, and $656 million was in the form of donations.
The US’ donations make up 14.67% of all voluntary contributions given globally. The next biggest donor is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an American private organization.

It’s not yet clear whether the US’ cuts to WHO funding will be taken from assessed or voluntary contributions.
The next member country with the biggest contributions is the UK, which paid $434.8 million in dues and donations during that same time span, followed by Germany and Japan.

China contributed close to $86 million in assessed and voluntary contributions in that time period.

Why does this matter?
Here’s the issue: critics have long alleged that member states hold different levels of influence in the WHO due to their political and financial capabilities.

Major donors like the US are perceived by some as holding outsized influence, which has historically caused friction; during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its allies left the WHO for a number of years because they felt the US had too much sway in the organization.

Recently, the same skepticism has been aimed toward the WHO’s relationship with China; critics have questioned whether the WHO is independent enough, given China’s rising wealth and power. They point to the WHO’s effusive praise of China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and the fact that China has successfully blocked Taiwan from gaining membership.

Taiwan is a self-governing democratic island which has never been ruled by the government of the People’s Republic, but is claimed by Beijing as part of its territory.

“WHO is a specialized UN agency composed of sovereign states,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian at a news conference on April 10. “Taiwan’s participation in the activities of WHO and other international organizations needs to be arranged in a reasonable and appropriate manner after cross-straits consultations under the One-China principle.”

Trump and his administration alluded to the alleged Chinese increase in influence in regard to the pandemic on Tuesday.
“Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China’s lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death,” Trump said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was more blunt, claiming that the WHO “declined to call this a pandemic for an awfully long time because frankly the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want that to happen.”

The WHO has responded to these accusations by urging member countries not to politicize the pandemic.
“The United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement last week.

CNN’s James Griffiths contributed to this report.

Also at the briefing, the president said plans to ease the national economic shutdown were being finalized, and that he would be “authorizing governors to reopen their states to reopen as they see fit.” At the same time, Trump made clear that he was not going to put “any pressure” on governors to reopen.

Trump read a long list of names of people in business, health care and sports who will advise him on how to restart the economy. “We have to get our sports back,” Trump remarked. “I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.”
In the meantime, Trump declared that the United States would undertake a 60-to-90 day investigation into why the “China-centric” WHO had caused “so much death” by “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus’ spread, including by making the “disastrous” decision to oppose travel restrictions on China.

The United States is the WHO’s largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period. Trump said the United States contributes roughly $400 to $500 million per year to WHO, while China offers only about $40 million. The money saved will go to areas that “most need it,” Trump asserted.

“We have deep concerns over whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said, accusing the WHO of failing to adequately keep the international community apprised of the threat of the coronavirus.

“The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” Trump went on. He added that the WHO had ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.

As early as late December, Wuhan medical staff were suspected to have contracted the disease, indicating likely human-to-human transmissibility.

On January 4, in a statement first flagged by The National Review, the head of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Infection warned that “the city should implement the strictest possible monitoring system for a mystery new viral pneumonia that has infected dozens of people on the mainland, as it is highly possible that the illness is spreading from human to human.”

The Chinese government also began suppressing news about the virus, and even detained Doctor Li Wenliang, who has since died of coronavirus after trying to warn the international community of the threat. Nevertheless, on January 8, the WHO declared: “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks.”

Again on January 14, the WHO simply echoed Chinese government statements:  “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

By January 19, the WHO had changed its tune somewhat, but still hedged. “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread, or its source, which remains unknown.”

Reports suggest senior WHO officials suspected human-to-human transmission from the outset.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S. and a key member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, has said misinformation from China, repeated by the WHO, had affected U.S. response efforts.

Several media organizations had also uncritically cited WHO’s assurances about the coronavirus.

The Washington Post even ran a story quoting a Chinese official asking for “empathy” and slamming the White House for acting “in disregard of the WHO recommendation against travel restrictions.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, just hours after Trump announced travel restrictions on China on Jan. 31, criticized the president’s “hysterical xenophobia.”

“I was the one person who wanted to do it,” Trump said at Tuesday’s briefing, referring to the border closure.
In March, The Post finally acknowledged that critics accused China and WHO of “covering up or downplaying the severity of an infectious disease outbreak.”

Amid the pandemic, footage emerged of a senior WHO official cutting off an interview after a reporter implied Taiwan, which is not a WHO member state, is independent of China. The official, Canadian doctor Bruce Aylward, initially pretended not to hear the question before terminating the Skype call with the reporter.

The United Nations Secretary-General on the World Health Organization issued a statement after Trump’s remarks saying it was “not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus,” and noting that the agency has “thousands of staff” working on the outbreak.

“Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” the statement read. “The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future.”

Democrats in Congress quickly voiced outrage, as well.

“Withholding funds for WHO in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century makes as much sense as cutting off ammunition to an ally as the enemy closes in,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., has said recently that the agency needs more money during the pandemic.
“Given the WHO’s indispensable role, it is imperative that the United States increase contributions,” Menendez wrote in March.

Democrats have also pointed to Trump’s comments praising the Chinese government’s handling of the crisis as late as February 18. Biden advisers had made similar positive comments about China as the virus spread.

The White House has made accountability for international organizations a cornerstone of its policymaking. Earlier in his presidency, Trump successfully pushed other nations to contribute more to NATO, saying that international alliance was costing the United States an unreasonably large amount of money.

As usual, the briefing Tuesday contained some flareups. At one point, Trump slammed CNN analyst and Playboy reporter Brian Karem as a “loudmouth” and even threatened to leave the briefing, as Karem refused to stop screaming questions even after his microphone had been cut off and another reporter had begun speaking.

“I told them when they put this guy here, it’s nothing but trouble,” Trump said. “He’s a showboat. If you keep talking, I’ll leave, and you can have it out with the rest of these people.”

The president also shut down a reporter who insisted on mentioning that he was graciously asking a question for a colleague who couldn’t be in attendance.

“Who cares?” Trump asked. “If he can’t be here, that’s too bad.”

Gregg Re is a lawyer and editor based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @gregg_re or email him at gregory.re@foxnews.com.