In a 4 September message,  the WHO/HQ Staff Association called for an Extraordinary General Assembly (EGA), now due to take place on Monday, 22 September.

The message acknowledged what many staff were feeling: profound change, deep uncertainty, and a heavy personal and professional toll.

Their statement flagged key concerns raised by many WHO staff about the process that WHO’s top leadership has followed to make steep cuts in positions, worldwide and particularly at its Geneva Headquarters. The cuts were mandated by the budget crisis that hit the organization in early 2025 in the wake of the withdrawal of funding by new United States President Donald Trump, leading to a gaping $1.7 billion budget hole in WHO’s upcoming 2026-2027 two-year budget.

Transparency, fairness and sustainability cited as key concerns in process

Key concerns cited in the Staff Association message included failings of:

Transparency: organigrams revised without clear criteria or rationale, feedback disregarded;

Fairness: The “mapping and matching” of posts to be retained yielded a disproportionate impact on more junior grades, while senior posts were accommodated. That, as well as other process flaws created perceptions of bias;

Sustainability: a top-heavy structure of permanent posts, coupled with over-reliance on temporary contracts and revolving-door consultancy arrangements for core, operational tasks.

The letter called upon the WHO senior leadership for more data transparency, rebalancing of senior posts, fair recruitments, and accountability in termination meetings.

Resolutions up for consideration on Monday

An Open House was convened on 9 September to hear staff points of vie. That is to be followed by the EGA on Monday, where staff members will vote on three resolutions contained in a “Call to Action” that has been circulating in parallel. Those resolutions demand:

1. Full disclosure of Advisory Review Committee (ARC) discussions and results of all department-level reorganization plans, an “impact table of cuts”, post-by-post, with rationale and cost-savings; along with disclosures around named directors with open internal justice cases against them.
2. A freeze on post abolitions, new assignments and external hires until the disclosures are completed and independently verified; all new/converted posts open to the staff reassignment pool applications, based on merit
3. Mass relocations of jobs to regional and country hubs with a maximum of 10% of staff at Geneva’s headquarters; cancellation of all non-essential travel; and other ‘solidarity measures’, such as proportional trims by grade starting at the top, before reducing front-line technical posts.

And then came silence

The Staff Association recent moves, while welcome, unfortunately come after a long period of silence when critical decisions were actually being made by WHO’s new senior leadership and departmental heads.

In the weeks of June, July and August, as draft organigrams were developed, post retention and abolition decisions were finalized and colleagues’ separations formalized, the Association was utterly silent.

So the question is how much impact can the petition that is to be debated and voted on at Monday’s EGA really have?

For some, it feels like a classic soap opera storyline:

🚨 the siren sounds only after the incident,

⚖ the damage is already done,

📺 and the drama shifts to hearings once the culprits are gone.

Judicial guardrails are still missing

A deeper problem faced is the lack of accountability by WHO’s top-most echelons, and most of all, the director-general himself.

In February, a Staff Association statement before the WHO Executive Board’s 156th meeting stressed that:

“Reporting to the WHO governing bodies is not enough… A game-changing approach would be to establish an independent internal justice system reporting directly to the Board or an organ of the Health Assembly, similar to the current system for external audits.”

That call is even more urgent today. Petitions cannot replace a safe, trusted, and independent justice system where staff can raise concerns without fear of retaliation.

The restructuring is officially framed as down sizing due to funding cuts following the US pull-out. But in practice, it has also become an opportunity to forcefully and dishonourably remove longer-term staff with significant financial liabilities—sometimes worth years of payout packages (nearly around two and a half years of advance salaries, including indemnity and severances)—while retaining those on shorter contracts without financial liabilities but with closer reach to the DG’s office.

The World Health Assembly has already approved a milestone procedure to investigate the Director-General for misconduct at the Seventy-eight World Health Assembly in May 2025.

As reported in Health Policy Watch in May 2025, that new mechanism, however, also contains significant shortcomings, and is, at this stage is more symbolic and toothless than transformative. In addition, it is still not yet fully in place, and most unlikely during the period of this Director-General. See related story:

WHA Approves First-Ever Procedure for Investigating a WHO Director General  

Staff at all levels deserve the same protections

If oversight is necessary at the very top, surely staff at all levels deserve the same protections.

So the question remains: what purpose does a petition serve if there is no really independent mechanism to review the decisions being taken?

👉 The Staff Association was silent when that mechanism “to investigate the Director-General for misconduct”  was being drafted, negotiated, and adopted.

Without that, petitions such as the one being considered at Monday’s EGA risk becoming symbolic noise.  Staff may make their voices heard collectively for a moment in time. But they will still be forced to enter a lengthy, never-ending internal justice process as individuals – with no recourse to recouping their jobs – even if their cases are vindicated years later by the WHO’s supreme judiciary body, the International Labour Organizations, Tribunal of Appeals.

👉 For this petition to be truly extraordinary, staff, represented by the Staff Association, should also push for a genuinely independent mechanism where they can hold the Director-General himself accountable for all his decisions and actions—including the dishonourable removal of those who served with integrity. While the damage has already been done to those who lost their jobs due to so called restructuring, such an independent mechanism could protect others in the future.

Health Policy Watch disclaimer – The op-ed was submitted by a group of WHO staff representing diverse levels and functions in the organization, who requested anonymity, due to fear of reprisals.

Image Credits: Guilhem Vellut, WHO , WHO.