Canada, United States, South Africa and Kenya raise issue of fast-tracking NGO accreditation

FromGeneva
8 December 2006
Thiru Balasubramaniam


On the final day of the first WHO Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property (IGWG/PHI), Canada, United States and Kenya made helpful interventions on the fast-tracking of NGOs to the WHO IGWG process (on an ad hoc basis). Specifically, the United States delegate referred to the fast-track accreditation process undertaken at the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The WHO Legal Counsel noted that the WHO Executive Board (January 2007) would be the competent authority to make this decision. Kenya asked the WHO Secretariat on how to facilitate the quicket accreditation of civil society to the IGWG process. The Secretariat noted that a WHO Member State would need to raise NGO accreditation at the Executive Board in January 2007 but further clarified that this topic would be on the report of this meeting. The United States then queried whether NGO accreditation would be automatically included on the Executive Board and the WHO Secretariat confirmed this point.