A new WHO Climate Change and Health Action plan has been approved by a key World Health Assembly (WHA) Committee Tuesday evening – after hours of high-stakes, high-drama parliamentary maneuvers by a cluster of oil-rich World Health Organization (WHO) member states to shelve the plan failed.
According to reports, WHO member states accepted the original plan by a vote of 109-0, with 19 abstentions. Hours earlier, the WHA rejected a Saudi-led initiative to delay approval of the plan for another year by a vote of 86-23 with 11 abstentions. The Saudi initiative was backed by Russia as well as other countries of WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO), which includes oil rich Gulf states, and Iraq, Iran and Libya.
A final vote on the actual climate and health action plan was delayed for hours by a range of procedural and technical maneuvers, including two more sets of proposed amendments proposed by EMRO, which failed, as well as a series of debates and procedural questions about how to vote and the order in which the voting should take place.
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The debate was unusual as it focused on an action plan linked to a new WHA resolution on Climate Change and Health that had already been approved last year by an overwhelming majority of WHA members. As the very last item on this year’s packed WHA agenda, it also delayed the closing of the entire Assembly by several hours.
Near 6 pm Egypt’s delegate proposed yet another last-minute amendment “in the spirit of consensus” which provoked another procedural vote, when Peru asked to close the debate.
As the amendments and procedural motions dragged on for hours into the evening, delaying the final vote for longer and longer, it was clear that opponents of the measure were exhausting member states, but proponents remained in the room to see the measure over the goal.
“We’re really testing the rules of procedure today,” quipped WHO legal counsel, Derek Walton at one point.
Even after all of the amendments were exhausted and it appeared that the plan had finally been adopted by consensus, Egypt’s delegate objected once more, saying that the EMRO region could not support it.
Story was adapted from Health Policy Watch.
