The Challenges of the World Health Organization: Lessons from the Outbreak of COVID-19

The decisions adopted by the World Health Organization and the responses of its member states to the pandemic provoked by COVID-19 have revealed some of the challenges of this intergovernmental organization in its ability to provide efficient solutions to the health and health security problems of the international community at the beginning of the twenty-first century. WHO's normative deficit has negatively affected the organization's fight against the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The chronic financial deficit of this institution has also determined its failures to control and eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the persistent violations of the rules and recommendations, adopted under WHO's auspices, and the lack of control and accountability mechanisms in its legal framework have induced the little success of the institution's intents to contain the global COVID-19 crisis. WHO could only surmount these challenges and continue to play a crucial role as a leader forum for states' international cooperation in health and health security matters, if its members accept to reform the organization's legal and institutional design. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The International Monetary Fund and COVID-19: Old and New Challenges of a Post- World War II International Institution

The global pandemic caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 put the attention on the International Monetary Fund's ability to promote the cooperation between states in the fight against its dramatic economic and financial effects. The measures adopted by the IMF after the declaration of the health emergency of international concern related to the global outbreak of COVID-19 reveal the intensification of some of the traditional structural challenges of this Post-World War II intergovernmental organization. In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened the critics against the lack of democratic legitimacy of the IMF and has reinforced the competition that the Fund faces from other international financial institutions. The characteristics of the lending programs adopted by the Fund in response to this global crisis manifest states' persisting concerns and hostility towards the IMF's conditionality. The economic and financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak has also created some new specific challenges for the efficient functioning of the Fund. It has highlighted that the IMF's work could not be separated from the respect of the human right to health and the protection of the environment, as existential prerequisites of sustainable economic development, monetary and financial stability, and social wellbeing. © 2021 Centro Universitario de Brasilia. All rights reserved.