Today Luxembourg’s Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs and Minister of the Economy, Mr Franz Fayot, and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the period 2020-2023 in support of the Organization’s Thirteenth General Programme of work 2019-2023. The signature of the new MOU underscores the longstanding commitment of the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – an important partner in global health – to help WHO to achieve its ambitious triple billion targets by 2023: 1 billion more people will benefit from universal health coverage; 1 billion more will be better protected in health emergencies, and 1 billion more will enjoy improved health and wellbeing.
The overall objective of the MoU is to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals through WHO’s work in countries, focussing on three broad areas:
- Achieving universal health coverage
- Addressing health emergencies
- Promoting healthier populations
By providing flexible and predictable funding to WHO, Luxembourg is effectively helping WHO to be agile and strategic in achieving its triple billion goals.
The new MoU also addresses gender equality in line with the UN System-wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, that enables gender issues to be mainstreamed systematically and measurably into all UN functions and entities, and highlights the importance of the Junior Professional Officer programme.
The signature of the new MoU follows Luxembourg’s support to WHO in March 2020 for the COVID-19 response, to the WHO Contingency Fund for Emergencies and the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), an initiative aimed at making vaccines, tests, treatments and other health technologies to fight COVID-19 accessible to all.
