Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2006, 269-270, 279). However, on examination, the case supporting this observation
falls down. the wHo is composed of 193 member states, all of which can possess
divergent preferences and views. Given this reality, it is entirely reasonable to
expect that member states will, from time to time, disagree with each other over the
organisation's planned course of action or activities. It is also entirely possible that
while one or even a few member states will object to the direction or actions, not
all member states will. this places the wHo's bureaucracy in a precarious situation
whereby the actions it takes may be congruent with the (often silent) majority of
member states but vehemently objected to by a small minority.
In the context of SarS, it is evident that the majority of member states fully
supported the wHo's decision to issue the alerts and travel advisories, and later to
criticise the chinese government, by the fact they declined to renounce the wHo's
behaviour. only china formally objected to the wHo's actions (the only protest
from canada was at a provincial level—the federal government did not object)—
and even then the chinese government declined to push the matter due to mounting
pressure from the international community to cooperate with the wHo. In fact,
evidence of the international community's support for the wHo's actions was made
very apparent at the 56th wHa, convened in May 2003 at height of the pandemic.
throughout the assembly as well as the subsequent plenary meetings that followed
in June, representatives from Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Maldives,
South Korea, brunei Darussalem, turkey, Mongolia, Finland, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Singapore, thailand, Pakistan, Jamaica, Zambia, Zimbabwe, the european
commission, and vietnam announced their governments' appreciation and continued
support for the wHo's management of the 2003 SarS pandemic (wHo 2003c,
160, 184; 2003d, 20-34; 2003e, 3-46). aside from a comment made by the chinese
government representative, no mention was made that the wHo had overstepped its
mandate or that it had taken actions that were either unauthorised or unprecedented.
even in private conversations there appears to have been no protest raised. as
Heymann recalls,
I've had the honour of speaking with the heads of many affected countries, and in those
encounters there was never any telling wHo that we'd overstepped our mandate. what
was said was 'we understand the criteria, we understand why we've been put on this list.
we want to get off as soon as we can'.
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Moreover, many member states pressed the WHO to take affirmative action. As
one senior WHO legal official noted,
it wasn't done without demand for that to be done coming from member states. In other
words, although there was no process, member states were asking us to take action in
that timeframe, of that type. but there was not a consensus amongst the member states
per se. there were individual demands from many member states. that we responded
to such demands is entirely within what we are supposed to be doing according to our
constitution.
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